


a stone is a stone

by Nanoochka



Series: the get-through [2]
Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, The Mandalorian (TV)
Genre: Angst, Communication Failure, Crisis of Faith, Depression, Developing Relationship, Dom/sub Undertones, Domestic, Explicit Consent, Found Family, Grief, Loss of Purpose, M/M, References to past slavery, Religious Guilt, Vulnerability, post-Chapter 16: The Rescue, post-season 2 finale, the terrifying ordeal of being seen
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-01-15
Updated: 2021-03-02
Packaged: 2021-03-12 03:14:43
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 7
Words: 40,726
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28753473
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Nanoochka/pseuds/Nanoochka
Summary: Once, Din promised to return to Cobb in Mos Pelgo after he completed his mission and reunited Grogu with the Jedi. But he's been away a long time, and things on Tatooine aren't quite the same as he left them.Nor, if Din is being honest, is he.
Relationships: Din Djarin/Cobb Vanth
Series: the get-through [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2108025
Comments: 169
Kudos: 248





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> A million thanks to [R.C.](http://rcmclachlan.tumblr.com), [ghost_teeth](https://everyoneissquidwardinpurgatory.tumblr.com/), and [wolfhalls](http://wolfhalls.tumblr.com) for their enthusiasm as I got this started, and R.C. and ghost_teeth especially for the handholding and excellent notes. Title from Helena Deland.
> 
> I do recommend reading the previous story in the series, [leave 'em on a high note](https://archiveofourown.org/works/28349748), for context. In case you didn't read the tags, there are heavy spoilers for the Season 2 finale.
> 
> This will likely take a while to update and complete, but if Din and Cobb are gonna live in my mind rent-free, I might as well have flatmates. I'm tentatively aiming for weekly updates. In the meantime, come find and/or shout at me [on tumblr](http://nandalorian.tumblr.com).

Mos Pelgo had a market now.

Red and yellow flags, their vibrant newness only slightly faded from Tatooine’s suns, snapped smartly in the breeze over the bazaar. They were an unexpected bright spot in the otherwise beige wasteland, an invitation to joy beneath which all other colours seemed to congregate: every shade of the rainbow in the form of elaborate pottery, tapestries and textiles, jewellery, and stall after stall of fruits and vegetables, true luxuries in the desert. Smoke from cooking fires rose high above the tented stalls, carrying the smells of cuisines both exotic and familiar. 

And spices. Sacks upon sacks of them. They radiated life in their sheer abundance and intensity of colour, brilliant as gems from every corner of the galaxy. This was the surest sign that Mos Pelgo had flourished, attracting trade and artisans and, of course, many, many more souls. New, bigger houses and outbuildings had sprung up around the original grid; there were actual streets snaking off the main drag, through which people, wagons, and the odd speeder meandered. What was once little more than a hamlet had grown into a respectable town. 

Din had instructed Boba Fett to land the Slave I at the far end of the settlement. The cantina once stood at its centre, and instinctively Din had planned an approach that would escape notice. Except the far end of the settlement looked very different these days. Like a river swelling past its borders, it was now in a different place entirely.

“Do you know where you're going?” Fennec Shand had asked skeptically as Din descended the ramp, hauling a sack that contained all his remaining possessions. It was lamentably light, even for beskar. “You described this place as practically a ghost town, and clearly that is not the case now.”

“I’ll be fine,” he answered despite the thread of doubt in his voice. “It can’t have changed that much; I’d have heard if my contact was no longer here.” As soon as he said the words, Din recognized his flawed optimism for what it was. How exactly _would_ he have heard anything, with the Razor Crest destroyed? It wasn't like someone could just call him if they had no idea where he was.

Off whatever dismay showed on his face, too exposed and vulnerable in more ways than one, Fennec and Boba Fett exchanged a look. Fett hadn’t so much as hinted that Din was welcome to travel with them beyond Mos Pelgo. Din had his suspicions, but he wasn't entirely sure where they were headed next. So it was a surprise when he said, “Contact us if you don’t find what you’re looking for. We could use a man of your skills.”

“I’ll keep that in mind.” Din inclined his head but didn’t bother to pretend it was something he might actually consider. He hadn’t picked Mos Pelgo for the adventure. “What will you do?”

Communicating with anyone whose face you couldn’t see was a language of subtlety Din had spent nearly thirty-five years perfecting. Fett managed to be inscrutable even by Mandalorian standards. 

At length he replied, “We have business in Mos Eisley. Close enough to provide aid, should you need it.” For a moment Din was certain his gaze fell to the Darksaber at his hip, a heavy and unignorable weight upon his belt.

There were a thousand implications there; Din could have bristled at one, or all of them. “Thanks for the ride,” he said stiffly. “I can find my way from here.”

Still, it wasn't with total lack of feeling that he saw them nod farewell, then climb slowly up the ramp to the ship. He watched the Slave I’s engines fire and kept watching until it was little more than a speck in the desert sky. Long enough for his scalp to begin to prickle beneath the suns’ heat.

With no reason left to dawdle, Din had turned back to Mos Pelgo and made the rest of the way on foot, past a new and surprisingly active landing zone and deeper into town. Whatever his hopes were of entering unnoticed, they proved not so much true as… irrelevant.

From a young age he had lived in relative anonymity beneath his helm. A Mandalorian might be faceless, but they were never inconspicuous, too easily recognizable by their armor. Too commonly feared, resented, abused. Din had removed his helmet when the Jedi came to take Grogu away. Hadn’t worn it or his _beskar’gam_ since. And yet as he walked slowly through the bazaar, clad only in his flight suit and with his cape tossed over one shoulder, ignoring hawkers and merchants and even beggars, now, for the first time in his life, no one spared him a second glance. He was truly invisible. Just another face in the crowd.

It felt different than he thought it would.

As it turned out, the cantina hadn’t moved. Others had simply joined it, along with smaller cafés and family-friendly establishments that bustled with activity and lively chatter, animated conversation, shrieking children. Places he might’ve taken Grogu instead of a grimy tavern, if.

If a lot of things.

Din had to shoulder his way through the front door. The cantina was busy, busier than he’d seen it during his short stay in Mos Pelgo almost a year ago, even when the entire town had gathered to hear the details of his and Cobb's harebrained plan to kill the krayt dragon. The noise was unbearable without his helmet to dampen and filter out the worst of it, and yet no one else seemed to notice—or care—that fifty Jawas stuffed in an X-wing would’ve made less of a racket. 

Din glanced around, teeth already starting to clench. Incredibly there were Tuskens gathered at a table with a couple of other aliens, conversing in an animated and indecipherable combination of languages from signing to Basic. Other tables held mixed groups playing dice or cards while some simply laughed or shouted at ear-splitting decibels. A few customers, townies, no doubt, looked Din up and down before going back to their drinks, deeming him not a threat despite the spear on his back.

One thing that hadn’t changed was the Weequay behind the bar. He was the same down to his grubby clothes and padded vest. It gave the effect of past and present being superimposed on one another, and for a moment Din had to wonder if he’d merely been stuck in one spot all this time while the world moved on without him, his feet buried in sand. 

Even over the raucous noise, bustle of clientele, and servers—they were new too—hurrying back and forth with trays of alcohol, the Weequay still managed to catch Din’s eye with a solemn nod as he poured a round for a group of dusty miners who looked like they were already three sheets to the wind.

Din sidled up to the bar, squeezing wordlessly between a Toydarian and an Aqualish, both of whom shot him dirty looks that barely quelled when he gazed expressionlessly back. The Weequay ignored them both in favour of slapping a grizzled palm down on the bartop in front of Din. No recognition brightened his expression before Din dropped his gaze, pointlessly apprehensive of being identified.

“What’ll it be, friend?” he asked. The voice was just as Din remembered it, though the words were a long way from how he’d once warned Din that they didn’t get many visitors here. Clearly he knew Din wasn’t local, but nor did he much seem to care. Just another passing face, now, and not a very interesting one at that.

“Spotchka,” said Din, fishing a few credits out of his pocket, but then he hesitated. He waited until the Weequay clattered a tin cup onto the bar in front of him to add, “I’m looking for Cobb Vanth. The Marshal.”

The Weequay raised an eyebrow but didn’t look up as he splashed a healthy glug of luminescent-blue alcohol into Din’s cup and recorked the bottle. The only sign of suspicion he gave was the way he set it down on the counter with a little more force than necessary. Gaze less neutral than before, but not hostile. Yet. “Why? You in need of assistance?”

“No. Just looking for him.”

“Well, if it’s a marshal you’re after, I’m afraid I can’t help you there. Ain’t been one of those in these parts for some time, not unless you’re looking to fill the position.”

“I'm not.” Din’s stomach landed somewhere in the vicinity of his feet.

The Weequay shrugged and returned the bottle of spotchka beneath the bar. “Suit yourself. Either way, Vanth’s bound to show up sometime. Usually does, most evenings. You’re welcome to wait so long as you keep buying.”

Din raised his eyebrows sharply. Either he was getting tipsy on spotchka fumes, or this conversation was making less and less sense by the second. “Wait.” He held up a hand. “Vanth’s in Mos Pelgo? But you said—”

“Hey, barman! Can we get a drink down here or what?” Another customer at the opposite end of the bar whistled loudly, slapping his hand down on the countertop several times.

The Weequay sighed. Beyond that he didn’t seem to be in much rush, and he met Din's gaze flatly. “Look. Vanth’s a busy man.” His tone didn’t leave room for interpretation when he leaned forward and murmured, “This ain’t Mos Eisley, stranger. We don’t take kindly to people fixin’ to cause trouble. So you better not be searching for Vanth with any kind of ill intent, you hear me?”

Despite himself, the corner of Din’s mouth twitched. He nudged the credits a little farther along the bar and picked up his snort of spotchka. “Vanth’s a friend. If he’s not happy to see me, you can run me out of town personally.”

“I’ll hold you to that.” With another stern look, the Weequay departed to trundle over to the belligerent idiots who’d yet to stop hollering at him. Well then.

Din turned and looked around the cantina. It wasn’t as though there were many free tables to choose from. He managed to locate one in a corner with only a small amount of alcohol spilled on it. Leaning his pack and spear against the wall behind him, he settled in to wait. There was no way of telling if it would be minutes or hours before Vanth turned up, or if he’d still be sitting on his hands by the time the suns rose tomorrow morning and everyone had shuffled home. 

In an ideal galaxy, Din would have taken himself directly to Cobb’s house and knocked on his front door. But Din didn’t live in an ideal galaxy or anything close to it. He didn’t even know where Cobb lived. The thought made him want to throw back his spotchka and start walking to Mos Eisley and the nearest spaceport right now.

Because Din’s luck wasn’t that good, it was, in fact, hours and not minutes before Cobb turned up. Din was on his fourth drink despite his best efforts to stretch out each sip, and his credits were running dangerously low. But then a new arrival sent ripples through the cantina that shook Din out of the light dissociative state he’d slipped into, deliberately trying to avoid thinking of anything in particular, and he glanced up and looked around to see what the sudden commotion was. 

Cobb’s entrance wasn’t half as dramatic as the first time they met, though he did pause expectantly at the front door. His appearance caused a number of shouts and hollered greetings to go up around the cantina as people recognized him. Like a wave melting into the sea, the crowd seemed to swallow him whole almost instantly, patrons surging forward to slap him on the back or thrust drinks into his hands. 

He looked both exactly the same and so much _more_. Cobb’s hair and beard hadn’t changed, still a familiar, well-groomed shock of sandy gray against his tanned skin, but gone were the faded rust-red tunic and tattered utility pants of a backwater marshal. Now he wore a pale linen shirt and tan pants of obvious quality beneath tall fawn-coloured boots. His jacket was olive-green khaki and very fine, if practical, nearly sweeping the floor except where it was cut to waist height at the front: easier access for his thigh holster and tactical belts. With approval Din noted he was still armed to the teeth despite his elegant clothes, down to the knife in his boot.

His bright crimson scarf was unchanged, a proud beacon in a dustbowl-beige world. 

Din’s pulse was abruptly loud in his ears.

Like a victorious king returned, Cobb accepted the welcome with magnanimity and made his way to the bar to nod at the Weequay, one of the few people who seemed unmoved by Cobb’s presence. They inclined their heads together in familiar greeting, and as Din watched, the Weequay murmured something in Cobb’s ear, then jerked his chin in Din’s direction even while he never stopped polishing the glass in his hands. Din sat very still as Cobb turned and sought him out in the crowd.

Their eyes met. Not that Din had expected the ceiling to cave in or for the suns to suddenly implode at their reunion, but he had to swallow back a surge of disappointment when Cobb’s expression remained blank.

Nothing continued to happen. Cobb twitched an eyebrow, flicked Din an assessing gaze that apparently found him wanting, then turned back to the bar to finish his first drink. Outright rejection would have been kinder than such bland dismissal. Din sighed.

For the better part of an hour, he watched Cobb circulate like he had all the time in the world, trading stories and accepting drinks, completely unmoved by the stranger waiting in the corner. Like Din wasn’t there at all.

Perhaps he shouldn’t have come.

Just when Din was getting annoyed enough with Cobb’s little performance to consider getting up to leave, the man of the hour deigned to wander his way. Still the same snake-hipped swagger, the same cocky smirk of someone assured of his place in the pecking order: at the top.

He paused in front of Din’s table and looked down at him with a laconic smile Din hadn't seen in months. It didn’t erase the pain of everything else he was mourning, but it did make his heart kick up in his chest and his fingers clench around his empty cup. Maker only knew what his face was doing.

Cobb met his gaze steadily, if curiously, and sipped his drink. The alcohol left an appealing liquid shine on his lips. 

“Howdy,” he said once he’d finished sizing Din up, evidently uncaring whether he was animal, vegetable, or mineral. He let the moment drag on before he nudged a stool out from under the table with his foot. Cobb sat. In such close proximity, his long, rangy legs barely had room to bend, and his knobby knees brushed Din’s. Interestingly he didn’t shift away. 

“Barkeep said you were asking after me. Apparently—” He paused again, so purely for effect that Din wanted to roll his eyes and throw his cup at him. “—we’re friends.”

Din returned his gaze with an impassive expression. Partly it was for the satisfaction of beating Cobb at his own game, but partly, too, it was so he could take his time examining him from up close, dragging his eyes over those sharp features he hadn’t seen outside of a holo call for almost a year. Not even the fact that Cobb was being a colossal _mir’sheb_ could dull the pleasure of this moment. He was here. They were both here, even if Grogu was not. Din tried to give himself permission to savour it despite the swell of guilt behind his sternum. 

All thoughts of Grogu touched an ache in his chest, as they were wont to do, but the kid would have wanted him to have this. Would have shared in this joy and squealed his happiness with arms outstretched, assured of Cobb’s welcome even if Din was not. Of that much, at least, Din was certain.

Only when Cobb shifted awkwardly, unnerved by Din’s silence, did he let himself relish the small victory. He met Cobb’s eyes briefly, as long as he could bear but not nearly long enough, then lowered his gaze to his hands. A tiny smile tugged at his lips.

“I’m beginning to reconsider after that stunt you just pulled,” he murmured. Din tried for levity, but as he forced himself to claim another moment of eye contact, willing Cobb to put two and two together, desperation got the better of him like it’d merely been lying in wait this whole time. His smile wavered as he struggled to hold back the surge of misery and exhaustion that rolled over him like a wave. “But yes. You could say we’re friends.” 

The smirk flickered, then fell from Cobb’s face. He stared. From the way his lips parted soundlessly and his gaze sharpened, travelling urgently over Din’s face, disbelief warred with instinct as recognition slowly dawned.

Abruptly Cobb stood, knocking over his stool. His eyes reflected brief panic before he turned to shove his way out of the cantina, bolting like a man with a rancor on his tail. The Weequay and many other eyes paused to watch him go, then shifted accusingly back to Din.

He hesitated. After a split second of indecision, he grabbed his bag and his spear and hurried after Cobb, muttering, “Excuse me,” to no one in particular. In his haste he barely avoided toppling the table himself. 

Silently the crowd parted to let him pass, though not without a few glances that ranged from curious to distrustful to upset. It seemed Din could inspire hatred without the Mandalorian helmet after all.

Outside the cantina, he waffled and looked around, unsure which direction to turn with no sensors to scan for evidence. He glanced to the left, and that’s when he almost missed it—the hem of a long olive-green coat disappearing around a corner. He blew out a hard breath and followed at a quick walk. The sand swallowed up the sound of his footfalls in his heavy boots, and not another soul looked his way as Din ducked into the narrow alley that ran alongside and behind the cantina.

Left, and left again, then a quick right, and Cobb was there, staring at the mouth of the alley in wait.

They came together like a clash of beskar against steel.

The force of it slammed Din against the nearest wall, and he absorbed the impact with a grunt. His meagre belongings fell uselessly to the ground as he locked his arms around Cobb’s back, clinging for dear life as Cobb engulfed him in a hug so powerful it punched the air out of Din’s lungs. He squeezed him back, shoving his face and a noise alarmingly like a sob against Cobb’s scarf, and wished the hug could be tighter, tight enough to wring the past year and all memory of it from his body.

“You son of a gravel maggot,” Cobb swore, muffling the harshness of the words against Din’s hair. He balled his hands in the front of Din’s cloak, fisting some of the flight suit with it like he meant to fight him, but all he did was use it for leverage so he could pull Din closer, breathlessly close, then push him away to look at his face. 

His eyes were full of a wild desperation Din knew must be echoed in his own expression, frantic and disbelieving and afraid, like something might come from down the sky at any moment to snatch him away. Din found himself braced and panting hard, adrenaline and anguish slamming into him so violently that his body didn’t know whether to fight or flee. But Din didn’t want to run, and he was so tired of fighting. He wanted to fall to the ground and let the sand take him.

Sensing he might be in danger of collapsing, Cobb abandoned his grip on Din’s clothes in favour of grabbing his face, fingers firm enough in his hair that it earned a gasp and a shudder as Din’s vision blurred. He squeezed his eyes shut and tried to turn away from Cobb’s searing gaze, the way he greedily took in the details of Din’s face now that he knew him for who he was. This was the second time. The second time someone had ever— 

“Din, the _fuck_ ,” Cobb spat, shaking him a little. His voice was distraught. Yet he held him firm, resisting Din’s attempts to escape or hide himself. “How many times I’ve tried to raise you on comms—!”

“My ship,” Din forced out, breaths coming with difficulty. “It was destroyed. I’ve been—” 

“All I could find out was the Imps blasted a bounty hunter’s gunship to hell, and next thing I knew every channel was shouting about Moff Gideon being captured. No mention of you or a child anywhere. I turned over every rock I could think of, and… nothing.” With a shake of his head and a muttered curse, Cobb shifted his grip until his hands were cupping Din’s face instead, touch gentling against his cheekbones. He was trembling. The rest went unspoken, except for, “The kid, is he—”

“No.” Surging forward, Din wrapped his fingers around Cobb’s wrists to emphasize the urgent shake of his head. “He’s alive. I—” He swallowed once, heavily. Dragged his gaze up from Cobb’s mouth to meet his eyes. Din’s voice sounded very different as he said, “I completed the mission. Grogu’s with his people.”

That pronouncement hung there a moment, balanced on a knife’s edge between pride and despair. When it toppled, Din choked back what he feared might emerge as a sob.

“Oh, sweetheart.” 

That _word_. It was hushed, barely louder than a desert breeze, but Cobb leaned forward, pulling Din against him the way one would an orphaned child, soft and quiet and secure now that the cries had died out. Except Din had been just such a child once; his covert had saved him, cared for and raised him, but Mandalorians weren’t built for this kindness. Weren’t built to crumble and fall apart. Instead they had offered a creed and a shell of beskar that could seal all the hurt in and keep everything else out. 

Din felt the tears that wanted to carve a chilly path to meet the edge of Cobb’s thumb. But they held. He held. This was not the time or place for weakness. Still, despite everything, it was not the Way.

“I wanted to find you,” he said.

“And find me you did.” Cobb’s lips were gentle against the side of his forehead, breath warm and full of tenderness. It lasted a moment only, ending before comfort could stretch past its breaking point, and then he was letting Din go to collect the pack containing his beskar’gam off the ground. Then the spear, which he gently passed into Din’s hands. 

He hefted the bag onto his shoulder and placed his warm palm against the side of Din’s neck. And that. That was fine. It was enough. When Din looked up to meet his gaze once more, his breaths had already started to come easier.

Cobb tipped his head towards something. There was no telling what, except that it was an invitation to follow.

“Come home with me, huh?” he murmured for Din’s hearing alone. He let his hand fall from his neck. It didn't go far; Cobb curled his fingers around Din's wrist, exposed and unprotected without his gloves. “Let’s get you home.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Mir'sheb: smartass (in Mando'a)


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Fun fact: I wrote this chapter 8 times! We all have [R.C. McLachlan](rcmclachlan.tumblr.com) to thank for it ever seeing the light of day.

Outwardly Din had rediscovered his composure by the time they set out for Cobb’s home. Trouble was, Cobb had recovered his persistent, catlike inquisitiveness by then as well, which didn’t bode in Din’s favour. He could feel Cobb’s eyes on him, heavy as the midday suns, concern warring with curiosity warring with desire, probably, to be circumspect about Din’s privacy. No doubt he was wondering what the kriff had happened to get Grogu back to his people and how that ended with Din returning to Tatooine without his armor or his ship, barely more to his name than the clothes on his back. Obviously not quite right with himself. 

And he was right to wonder about those things. But as they walked and Din imagined more and more of the questions that would follow, apprehension grew like a creeping shadow despite the brightness of the day.

Even tripled in size, Mos Pelgo was still a smallish town, and the walk wasn’t a long one—a mercy, really, in the unrelenting desert heat, especially without Din’s armor to regulate his body temp or protect him from the suns’ rays. However, their path meandered past where he placed the settlement’s original borders, which meant Cobb had moved at some point during the last year. He’d never mentioned it on their calls. Hadn’t mentioned... a lot of things, it seemed. Like the fact that Mos Pelgo’s fortunes had turned for the better, or that Cobb, apparently, was no longer its Marshal. 

Had he really been that cagey all this time, or was Din just so consumed with his own problems that he’d never thought to ask what was going on in his life?

He peered at the small whitewashed homes as they went, wondering, with quiet—if perturbed—hunger, which one used to be Cobb’s. Like it would soothe the pacing thing inside him that longed to situate Cobb in a particular time and place, reconstructing lost months and days as if the past were a holodvid Din could sit back and watch on command. The picture he’d held in his mind for so long, of Cobb calling him from the warmth and comfort of his kitchen table, unchanging and immovable in time, was the product of sheer fantasy. Rationally he knew that. And yet it was one he was reluctant to let go.

“Here we are,” Cobb murmured as they stopped in front of an unremarkable domed house. 

Set slightly farther back from the others, it was perhaps a little larger in size, though not enough to draw particular attention. Its most noteworthy features were the stairs leading up to the roof and a dedicated moisture spire round the back, but even that wasn’t terribly out of the ordinary. Plenty of well-to-do folks in Mos Eisley or Mos Espa had their own vaporators, and Cobb too, sometime, somehow, had started doing well for himself. But anyone with eyes could have seen that by now. He gleamed like a new credit in the sun.

Din found himself wanting to look at Cobb curiously back, trying to see him in this new light. Instead he kept his eyes down and nodded mutely as Cobb opened the front door and gestured for Din to enter.

Inside was immediately cooler, a wash of chill air against his sweaty face and nape that moved Din to breathe a sigh of relief, even as the transition from full sun to dimly lit interior momentarily blinded him. Squinting to adjust, he saw a small sitting area arranged to the left of a curved flight of stairs and an open doorway to a bedroom. It was all whitewashed to blend seamlessly with the walls and domed ceiling. Light filtered in through small, square windows paned with heavy transparisteel to protect against Tatooine’s frequent sandstorms and keep out the heat. 

The faintest touch against Din’s shoulder drew his wandering attention back to Cobb, and he turned. Stopped. A thin shaft of sunlight had caught Cobb across the face, illuminating his hair and finding the colours of the desert in his eyes like misplaced jewels—amber brown sparking to gold and greyish green around the outer edge of the iris. Din felt his breath freeze, but then Cobb was pulling away, nodding his chin at the stairs in silent invitation. He proceeded Din down, the hem of his coat trailing behind him with a theatricality that had probably attracted him to it in the first place. 

Din followed, smiling faintly. He wouldn’t have put it past Cobb to have placed that beam of light there on purpose. Some people, through no fault of their own, seemed like they existed for the rest of the universe to orbit around; the suns’ light picked him out as though glad for something worth shining on. Din supposed that meant he should feel grateful too.

The rest of the house was a comfortable size, cavelike and dug mostly underground; long, narrow windows set close to the ceiling streamed afternoon light into the kitchen and main living area, furnished sparsely but invitingly in a colour palette that didn’t deviate much from white and beige. A fireplace for chilly Tatooine nights sat along one wall, and beyond that was a hallway that probably led to a ’fresher and another bedroom. Everything was curved, nary a right angle anywhere, with smooth archways and rounded ceilings that seemed to invite touch. Din could already feel the smoothness of the plaster beneath his hand, the way its subtle texture would catch just faintly against his fingertips like lines on a lover’s palm. 

Perhaps the most striking thing about it was that Cobb, bachelor or no, was exceptionally… neat. No clutter anywhere, everything put away in its place. For some reason Din had assumed he’d be messier. Less like… less like Din, for whom the compulsive need for order poorly disguised his lack of deep roots. 

Out of nowhere, something like a scream wanted to build below his chin, the reality of his displacement suddenly crushing. Din was used to feeling alien, forever a stranger in strange lands, but it was bearable with the Razor Crest’s staunch familiarity to return to, and when there was always a way off one rock or another. To be homeless in another’s home was disquieting. Even the home of someone he liked.

“It’s no palace,” Cobb said, evidently misreading Din’s silence, “but, y’know, it’s a roof over my head. Don’t really spend all that much time here.” There was an awkward pause before he cleared his throat and added, “You’re welcome to stay for however long you need.”

“You aren’t obligated to put me up,” Din murmured, already self-conscious of his blood-matted flight suit and dusty boots. 

Cobb snorted and cast Din a dry look. “We got a whole lot more to talk about if you think I’m doing this out of obligation.” 

As if to forestall further discussion on the subject, he gently placed the bag with Din’s belongings on the kitchen table—he couldn’t help but notice, with a pang, that Cobb pointedly avoided dumping it on the floor—then started to remove his scarf and coat, which he hung over the back of a chair. Without the scarf, his shirt, partly unbuttoned in front, showed a deep vee of tanned skin and silvery chest hair that Din’s quickly glanced away from. Even drowning in doubt and indecision, barely knowing which direction was up, he couldn’t make himself less aware of Cobb’s handsomeness, his casual gravitational pull.

Instead Din busied himself with setting down his spear next to his bag, then unwound his cape from around himself. He winced and muttered a heartfelt “ _kriff_ ” as it dislodged thousands of grains of sand onto the floor.

Cobb held out a hand before Din could apologize; either Din’s face was embarrassingly easy to read, or Cobb was watching him very closely indeed. Wasn’t out of the question that it might be both. “Don’t worry about it,” Cobb said. “Cleaning droid can get it later.”

“Sorry,” Din grunted anyhow, voice tight.

There was a gentle huff, and when Din looked up, Cobb was smiling at him in a way that made Din’s chest tighten. “I said don’t worry about it. Really. Ain’t no use getting upset about a little sand on Tatooine.” 

The silence descended again. They looked at each other. Then Cobb sucked in a breath, caution in his expression, and Din tensed. 

“Listen—”

“Is there somewhere I can clean up?” Din interrupted. “I haven’t changed out of these clothes since the Imps blew up my ship. I must stink.”

That, at least, was true. He hadn’t bathed properly in ages and was growing conscious of his own smell, the grit and grime and worse beneath his flight suit. There’d been no reprieve between tracking down Gideon’s light cruiser, rescuing Grogu, then—

The rest. 

Grogu was fortunate, really. Fortunate to be with the Jedi, who probably had the means to ensure a better standard of living than Din ever could. Clean clothes, consistent access to water for bathing, food that didn’t come out of a tin or have to be rehydrated. A real bed.

Watching Din’s face and whatever was going on there, Cobb said slowly, “You do, a bit,” like he could sense they were treading close to a landmine, even if he wouldn’t know its exact location until he stepped on it. But he bore the change of subject with equanimity and a small quirk of the lips to soften the edge of his honesty. As for whatever else he’d been about to say, Din didn’t try to kid himself that he was off the hook. “But yeah. ’Course we can get you cleaned up. Follow me.”

He walked them to the ’fresher down the hall, set between a bedroom and what appeared to be an office. Din resisted the urge to look more closely by focusing his eyes straight ahead, locked on the back of Cobb’s sun-reddened neck. 

When they stopped in front of the door and Cobb flicked on the light, he and Din both seemed to hesitate over what came next. Din should thank him and go about his business like a normal person, one who knew how to behave like a guest in another’s home. Instead he froze, waiting to see who’d move first. Neither of them did, caught in a moment that didn’t want to relinquish them, or they it. 

Cobb’s quiet chuckle seemed to say it all. Or so Din thought until the corner of his mouth lifted and he extended his hand to stroke the outside of Din’s wrist. Playfully he arched an eyebrow and murmured, “Can I offer any assistance? You’re moving like you recently had the shit beat out of you. Knowing you, you probably did.”

That was true—no amount of willpower could conceal the fact that Din’s body felt like one giant bruise. Plus, as invitations went, it was as neutral as they came. Neutral for Cobb, anyway. Perhaps if Din had been in another headspace, one with not so tenuous a grip on his emotions, he would have had it in him to wonder what it cost Cobb to keep his voice free of innuendo. Perhaps he would have accepted too. All it would take was turning his hand slightly to let their fingers entwine.

But that wasn’t remotely where he was at, and his “No” came out harsher than intended. More rebuke than refusal, and wholly inappropriate considering he was here thanks to Cobb’s good graces. That Din had come in search of _him_.

From the corner of his eye, he saw Cobb’s expression register surprise as he let his hand fall, eyebrows flying towards his hairline. His expressive mouth flattened with startled hurt he quickly tried to hide behind disapproval. Din felt his face grow warm with shame. 

“ _Dank farrik_ ,” he muttered, the curse escaping with a growl of frustration. He scrubbed his palms over his face. They were trembling. For a moment he left one hand over his eyes, knowing he was hiding and too exhausted and wrung-out to care. 

But Din knew exhaustion, what it was to be pushed to his physical and mental limits and the verge of breaking, and that had never been never an excuse to just lie down and give up before. The trouble was there was always a reason to keep going. Din wasn’t sure now what that might be, with Grogu gone along with his ship and creed and everything else.

It was just him now. And Din couldn’t say with any kind of certainty if that was enough. 

But there was also Cobb. Cobb, who was looking at him with an expression of weary guardedness Din was responsible for putting there, even if he wanted to turn away so he wouldn’t have to acknowledge its existence. 

With difficulty, he lowered his hand so the words would have one less barrier to pass through. “Cobb. I’m sorry.”

“It’s fine.”

“No. It’s not.” 

Din made himself meet Cobb’s gaze, unbearable though it was. The unsubtly ticking muscle in his jaw betrayed the judgement he was trying to conceal—an oddity in and of itself, given how rarely Cobb bothered to hide anything. Especially judgement. But he _was_ trying, and failing, to sustain his veneer of unconcerned host, because Din was a fucking mess and they both knew it, even if no one was willing to say it out loud.

Hesitatingly he reached out and laid his index and middle fingers alongside Cobb’s jaw, then nearly dropped his hand again in shock, spooking himself. Din realized it was the first time he’d ever touched Cobb’s face, felt the warmth of his skin or the bristles of his beard. This was real. _Cobb_ was real, after so many months fearing he might never be again, and Din was making a complete mess of things. Trailing chaos in his wake, as he was wont to do. The problem was he didn’t know how to stop, and if that was even possible short of removing himself from the equation entirely.

Was that what Din wanted? To leave when he’d only just arrived?

Cobb leaned into the caress just barely, though his expression didn’t lose its wariness. It was obvious how much it was costing him to bite his tongue, and Din almost wished he wouldn’t bother. A fight would’ve been simpler: pain was clarifying, violence purifying. Easy. Just once he wished everything didn’t have to be so hard.

He swallowed. Cobb’s eyes tracked the movement, and that was too much. Abruptly Din lost the battle with his ability to sustain eye contact, and he withdrew his hand and felt himself ball it into a fist against his thigh. “I’m grateful to you,” he said quietly, “for inviting me into your home. I just—I need a minute to get my bearings.”

Cobb watched him a moment longer, calculating, like he was coming to a decision about something. Din couldn’t think about what that might be. Then he said, slowly and at length, “Take all the time you need,” in a way that made Din’s stomach begin to churn. “I’ll grab you a fresh set of clothes and take a walk. Let you get settled without me hoverin’ over you like a mother hen.”

“You don’t have to—”

“Yeah, I know. But I can tell when a man needs his space.” 

Cobb was already moving away, expression kind but troubled. Din realized he wasn’t the only one struggling to find a foothold, except in Cobb’s case, he wasn’t to blame for this prickly reunion. 

Maybe it wasn’t that Din should leave so much as he probably shouldn’t have come at all.

“Cobb.”

“Don’t sweat it, partner,” Cobb said with a wave of his hand, then tossed over his shoulder, “Towels are in the cabinet by the sink.” He disappeared into one of the bedrooms to put an end to the conversation. As if he knew Din wouldn’t try to follow.

Mutely, and pointlessly since Cobb was no longer around to see, Din nodded once, a twitch of a thing that was more like a flinch. 

He stepped into the ’fresher and closed the door behind him. Much like the rest of Cobb’s home, it was minimalist and spotlessly clean, almost the size of the Razor Crest’s cockpit. No shower, but that was hardly a surprise on Tatooine; the sonic would do. A luxury compared to the scant closet that had passed for a ’fresher on Din’s ship.

He listened to the sound of Cobb moving around the house, suddenly separated by so much more than a door and a few walls. Dressers opening and closing, quiet muttering as Cobb searched for something that would fit Din’s shorter and wider frame. True to his word, there was a rustle of fabric as Cobb set something down outside the door. A moment later, footsteps on the stairs and a door whooshing open and shut. Silence.

There was no one left to hide from here, an absence that sent a pang through Din’s chest at the thought of Cobb’s hasty retreat from his own home, like Din was a bomb he didn’t care to remain in danger close range of. Still, Din locked himself in, humiliatingly grateful for such feeble comfort. 

Behind him a backlit mirror took up most of one wall, something Din took care to avoid. With an ugly noise at the back of his throat, he bowed forward, curling until his forehead pressed against the cool grey metal of the ’fresher door. His ragged breaths puffed back at him, quickly enough to verge on hyperventilating before he took the effort to smooth them out, and without conscious thought he reached into the pocket of his flight suit and clutched the metal ball that made its home there, not quite warm from his body heat. 

Some lifelines you had to cling to harder than others; they took effort to hang on to, pulled it from your bones. So Din clung, and breathed, and there he stayed for a good long while.

+

The sonic helped. Somewhat. Din emerged feeling slightly more human and certainly a cleaner example of one, though the face and body that greeted him in the mirror, when he summoned the courage to glance at himself, didn’t do much to sell the point. Almost instantly Din regretted looking. He was covered in violent purple bruises that had yet to fade from his fight with Gideon and the Dark Troopers, and the shadows beneath his eyes were almost as ugly. He felt a thousand years old. 

With a silent apology to Cobb for raiding the contents of his cabinets, Din unearthed a pair of tiny scissors he used to tidy his moustache, which had started to curl unpleasantly over his upper lip. The scruff on his chin he didn’t bother with; at forty years old, it was still as patchy and unimpressive as an adolescent’s, and Din had long ago given up hope of growing a proper beard. Plus it wasn’t as though there’d been anyone to disappoint before now.

Unfortunately his efforts didn’t improve his appearance so much as they served to highlight how much the rest of him resembled raw meat. No better than putting lipstick on a happabore. 

What helped even less was Cobb’s not-so-subtle fuck-you, which came in the form of the silky ochre-yellow robe he’d left folded outside the ’fresher door.

Maybe he just hadn’t found anything that would fit.

Or maybe it was exactly the kind of bitchiness Din should’ve anticipated in repayment for his earlier behaviour. 

With a sigh of deep resignation, Din put it on, belted the sash, and tried very hard not to think about how the satin felt against his skin after so long in a flight suit and restrictive, heavy armor. He plucked Grogu’s ball from where he’d set it on the edge of the sink and slipped it into the pocket of the robe, where it could stay close.

He was sitting on Cobb’s couch when Cobb returned, elbows braced on his knees and the Darksaber cradled in his hands like a live bomb. There’d been few opportunities to truly consider it since he’d won it from Gideon in battle, though if Din were honest, he hadn’t been in much hurry to do so. For such an incredible burden, it weighed next to nothing. Din thumbed the switch to unsheathe the blade just as Cobb came down the stairs.

Cobb stopped in his tracks when he saw it and dropped the cloth-wrapped package he held, eyes going wide. “What the kark is that?”

Din glanced away from the Darksaber’s unsettling black glow to meet Cobb’s gaze. All his instincts told him to hide it, but Din had grown up in a culture where nothing in his covert was secret and everything was shared. Heaviest was the burden shouldered alone and all that.

He sighed and inclined his head for Cobb to join him. The skeptical look didn’t leave Cobb’s face and he shook his head in disbelief, but he came, giving the Darksaber a comically wide berth as he sat.

Seated side-by-side, their shoulders and hips brushed, thighs pressed close.

The silence that settled around them wasn’t strained, but nor was it totally comfortable. Like wearing a hair shirt. Din wondered if Cobb felt it too.

“You didn’t have to put on the robe,” Cobb eventually murmured. He sounded only slightly cowed, but his shoulders were rounded like a guilty pup who’d been scolded for trying to drink out of the vacc tube. “I was just being an asshole.”

Despite himself Din snorted and shot Cobb a bored look from the corner of his eye. It’s not like Cobb had left him a different option, unless he’d expected to come home to find Din walking around naked. He also didn’t buy it for a second; Cobb wouldn’t hesitate to do it again. “Yeah, I got that.”

Busted, Cobb sighed and shifted his weight, slowly relaxing the alertness of his stance. “Joke’s on me, though, ’cause it sure looks good on you.” The way Cobb’s gaze landed on him felt almost physical, a languid caress down his spine that made Din’s cheeks grow hot. It was not unlike being in full sun: pleasurable, warm, but more sensitive the longer it shone on you. Din thought Cobb might actually touch him, but he didn’t, maintaining a respectful distance. He didn’t know whether or not to feel relieved. “Yellow’s really your colour.”

Din gave a long-suffering sigh. As he did, he retracted the saber blade, wanting to tell Cobb off without waving a literal weapon at him. But Cobb had already dropped the subject. Whatever his inclination to flirt, his attention had shifted back to focus, unnerved, on the Darksaber. When he sucked in a breath and held out his hand in wordless request, Din tutted and moved it out of reach.

“Trust me,” he said, “you don’t want to do that.”

Cobb looked at him sidelong. “You gonna tell me why, or is there a point to this little show-and-tell?”

“Not unless you’re looking to inherit a planet.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?” Cobb shot back. At Din’s silence, he gave an unimpressed grunt but settled his hands on his knees, like that was the safest place for them. 

Din huffed affectionately and raised his eyebrows at the amusing show of restraint. “You might be better off sitting on your hands given your track record with appropriating other cultures’ hardware, Vanth.”

“That was one time!” When Din just smirked, Cobb elbowed him with a grumbled, “Fuck you, Mando.”

The epithet hit Din like a slap. Trying to temper his reaction a moment too late, he somehow managed to flinch, go very still, and inhale much too sharply at the same time. He was even more out of practice at schooling his expressions into something that didn’t give everything away; without a helmet, his face was like a newborn child’s, prone to telegraphing every emotion whether he liked it or not. 

Sure enough, Cobb’s furrowed brow told him all he’d succeeded in doing was drawing the maximum amount of attention to his involuntary response. To make matters worse, he fumbled the hilt of the Darksaber and narrowly avoided unsheathing the blade again, which would have been a fitting denouement to the shitshow that was suddenly his life.

“For kark’s sake, careful with that thing,” Cobb hissed. Then: “What’d I say now?”

Caught, Din forced out a heavy breath and shook his head. “You can’t call me that,” he said firmly.

“I can’t call you your name?” It was a poor comfort that Cobb was perhaps the one other person in the galaxy with a face almost as expressive as Din’s. He looked at him like he’d grown a second head.

“ _Mando_ is not my name.” 

Calm deserted him for a second as Din struggled to find the words, and he squeezed his eyes shut for a moment to focus on breathing. Even half-underground, Cobb's house was bright. He could still see light behind his eyelids, searing, a flashbomb to the headache that was threatening to form behind his left temple. 

A hand landed on his leg. With a jolt Din looked down to find Cobb had transferred the grip on one of his knees to Din’s, a solid, reassuring touch. He glanced up and met Cobb’s gaze watching him steadily back. 

With a sigh, Din made himself relax his fingers one by one, relinquishing his death grip on the Darksaber. Its weight felt almost mocking in his hands when he said, “I’m not a Mandalorian, not anymore. I’m just—Din Djarin.”

Cobb stared at him for a moment. He frowned, clearly thrown by this revelation, but held his questions. That restraint wouldn’t last forever. But it was something, and Din felt a helpless surge of gratitude for Cobb’s unwavering, if exasperated, sense of loyalty. 

“Well then, Din, you have my apologies,” he said slowly. “I didn’t realize.”

Jerkily Din nodded. Cleared his throat. “I know you didn’t. But now you do.”

For a moment Cobb was quiet, just bobbing his head in acknowledgement, but then he returned his lingering, knowing gaze to the Darksaber, staring at it with new significance. Involuntarily Din’s spine stiffened. Waiting for the other shoe to drop. 

“Forgive me for asking,” Cobb began, “but that have anything to do with your shiny new toy?”

There went the other shoe. Of all the reactions Din might’ve expected, the laugh that burst from him was not it, even devoid of humour as it was. “You have no idea how completely not the case that is.” He could feel Cobb watching him, expecting more, but he was going to have to live with disappointment—for now. Din wasn’t sure when or if that might change. “I’m sorry. I’m sure you must have questions, but—it’s a long story.”

“Yeah, I bet.” Cobb snorted softly, with no real irony, then asked, “There a particular reason you don’t think I’d be interested in hearin’ it?”

“Honestly?” Another bitter laugh wrenched free of Din’s throat. “I’m trying to figure out how to explain everything without wanting to bash my own head in or scream. Haven’t quite gotten there yet.”

No answer came, not right away. Cobb appeared to be thinking about something pretty hard, expression somber, but he didn’t leave Din having to wonder why for long. His voice was full of the good-natured flintiness Din had come to associate with him, someone who was practiced at talking friendly with one hand on his gun. “I actually just got one question, though: does that—thing—pose a danger to folks here in Mos Pelgo? Because last we spoke, you had a whole lotta unpleasantness on your tail, and I’d like to be prepared if you think some of that might be headed our way.”

“No.” Din, hesitating only slightly, reached over to cover Cobb’s hand with his own. He gave a firm shake of his head and squeezed his fingers before letting go. “That’s all over with, now that the kid’s safe. I think.” He paused. “I’m pretty sure.”

“Oh, what the— _Din_!” 

“I mean it. I wouldn’t have come here if I thought it might put you at risk.” The way Cobb was looking at him, heavy and abruptly wary, made a contemptible little gremlin bristle inside him. Din wasn’t proud of it. But nor did he stop himself from blurting out, “And who would protect them if it did? Seeing as how Mos Pelgo is currently without its Marshal.”

Cobb barked a laugh and leaned back against the couch cushions. Din slanted him a look over one shoulder, nonplussed, but he didn’t have to see Cobb to picture it: the nonchalant splay of his long legs, thumbs hooked into his pockets in a practiced display of insouciance. Since their first meeting, he’d had to wonder how much of that swagger was an act, especially after he relinquished Boba Fett’s armor. Without the beskar’gam, Din’s body hardly felt like his own, centre of gravity thrown off-balance and the rest of him raw as an exposed nerve. Cobb’s easy physicality, his comfort in his own skin, almost made him envious. 

“That was beneath you,” Cobb drawled. “’Specially since you ain’t got the first clue what you’re talking about.”

“Then try me.” Annoyed at Cobb’s refusal to rise to the bait, petty as it was, Din gestured at the house around them. _Not a palace_ , Cobb had said, but it was grander than anything Din had ever known. Or maybe Cobb was just right on the money and Din was lashing out like a wounded animal, hurt at having been left out of the loop of Cobb’s life. Like he was one to talk. “What’s all this, Cobb? I come back and find you’ve gone from town Marshal to resident fancy man. I thought you were all about being a man of the people.”

Several moments went by in which Cobb was uncharacteristically silent. Then he rose to his feet and walked over to the kitchen without looking at Din. From the conservator he pulled out two bottles of what Din assumed was beer. Fancier than spotchka, anyway, or at least didn’t look like it’d been brewed in a bucket in somebody’s basement. Cobb uncapped one for himself and took a swig. Without warning he turned and tossed the other one at Din with far more force than was necessary.

Din caught it easily, the cold glass slapping painfully into his palm. He didn’t let it show that it stung, though he furrowed his brow and set the bottle down on the little table in front of the couch. 

There was no doubt he had crossed a line: first he’d thanked Cobb for his hospitality by shutting him out, treating him like a stranger in his own home, and now he was taunting him like a captive beast, waiting to see if he’d bite. Sometimes Din genuinely questioned if he had an inoperable condition that made him always have to say the wrong thing.

Cobb sauntered back over to lean against the kitchen table, legs crossed at the ankle, and took another sip of beer. He regarded Din with a deceptively bland expression, letting the moment drag on long enough to grow unbearable, then he said, “Maybe I should have started with something easier. When’s the last time you slept? Because you, my friend, appear to be in dire need of a nap.”

It was an out. Prickly as a massiff’s back and reluctantly given, but an out nonetheless. Din tried not to glower and reminded himself that this was far more leniency than he’d have shown someone else, had their situations been reversed. He’d shot people for less. Had once been willing to shoot Cobb, in fact, as much for his cheek as Fett’s stolen armor.

“It’s been a while,” he admitted at last. Then, with more difficulty: “You didn’t deserve that. I’m just—tired.”

“Glad we’re in agreement.” Giving a decisive nod, Cobb drained the rest of his beer and straightened. He set it down on the table with a succinct clink of glass and gestured at the bottle Din had yet to touch. “Maybe you better drink that and go lie down before I’m tempted to shove your glowing sword of destiny where the suns don’t shine.”

“Nice,” Din deadpanned. Somehow he resisted the urge to roll his eyes, and he definitely did not smile. It was absurd, surely, that Cobb’s affronted posturing made Din want to stand up and go to him in silent apology, to kiss the scowl off his face just to piss him off more. He knew with sudden certainty that’s how it would go, and it shouldn’t have made the thought even more appealing.

Unimpressed with Din’s retort, Cobb shot him a look that was all sass, puffed-up and thorny and so absolutely lovely that Din’s insides knotted with stupid longing just to look at him. He felt trepidation, gratitude, and maybe the first inkling that coming here hadn’t been the wrong decision after all. 

This time he couldn’t hold back the tiniest of smiles when Cobb pointed, jabbing his finger in Din’s direction for good measure. “I _am_ nice,” he said emphatically, scowling. “Real nice. And now I’m going to get you a kriffing blanket, because that’s just how nice I am.”

As he walked away with his head held high, he shot Din one last scathing look and muttered, perhaps to himself but probably not, “Dickhead.”

Quietly Din chuckled to himself and watched Cobb go with a fondness that was momentarily crippling. But the cavelike interior of Cobb’s home swallowed the sound, and without anyone around to witness it, his humor faded quickly. Din couldn’t help but glance down at the Darksaber still in his hand, where it’d been waiting as if patiently for him to notice it again. 

He sighed. The Darksaber, of course, didn’t respond. It was nothing more than an object, a weapon, and behind that a story. Din was still too consumed with trying to figure out the next chapter of his own to know what to make of it. He put it down anyway, off to the side, where he didn’t have to look at it. To his right, a beam of late-afternoon sunlight had found its way through the window, white and searing bright, just slightly too far off centre to blind him.


	3. Chapter 3

Never one to leave well enough alone, Cobb went so far to prove how nice he was that he didn’t just rustle Din up a blanket, but insisted on feeding him dinner too before he surrendered his whole bed.

“I ain’t got the patience to start digging out linens right now,” he said with a laconic wave when Din tried to protest. He was, actually, quite tired now, and this whole argument was draining him further. “Just sleep in my room, and I’ll kip in the spare.”

“I’m not putting you out of your own bed,” Din said with more patience than he felt. Seated at the kitchen table, he was tempted to put his head down right there and never rise again.

“You’re not,” Cobb answered. “Technically the spare bed’s mine too, so deal with it. We’ll figure the rest out tomorrow.”

Din let it go at that, but even after he accepted the offer and grudgingly retired, sleep refused to come. He couldn’t rest in more than fits and starts, barely a doze that left him feeling more exhausted than before. Not, of course, that it was surprising. In a life of constant hustle and too much paranoia, trying to close his eyes anywhere that wasn’t his rack on the Razor Crest didn’t come easy. Much as Din resented it, Cobb was right: it felt like years since he’d slept properly. On top of that he was lonely and sad, with an old man’s aching body, and Cobb’s bed smelled distractingly of, well… Cobb. Smoke and leather and sand, the disarming scent of another man’s hair on his pillow. Din breathed it in with a groan that was part longing and part frustration, palmed his half-hard cock distractedly. His own needy, restless desire set his teeth on edge. It was inconvenient to miss Grogu’s tiny body beside him while also craving Cobb’s warmth. It was inconvenient to want so much—to want anything at all.

It was full dark when he tore himself free of the sheets with a growl and blindly groped for the bedside lamp. He still had no clothes, not that he longed, particularly, to climb back into garments he was better off incinerating. A quick apologetic search through Cobb’s dresser drawers turned up a pair of undershorts that were comically tight on him but not enough to bust a seam or cut off circulation to anything important. Din slipped them on under the robe and set out for the roof and fresh air. He managed to only bump into things or stub his toe twice.

Tatooine nights were a sight to behold. For all the planet was a literal and figurative wasteland, Din hadn’t found their like anywhere else in the galaxy. No clouds or smog to obscure the diamond quilt of stars or dim the three moons’ bright, eerie glow. This far from real civilization, the sky itself was a dazzling wash of deep purples and blues swirled with pinpricks of white, the galaxy’s long arm just visible overhead. Down below, the desert stretched on and on, endless. In the moonlight it looked very like a sea indeed.

The last night Din spent on Tatooine had been around a Tusken fire, the scent of smoke and roasting meat heady on the air as they hatched a plan for the krayt dragon. Tuskens could be a prickly bunch, to be sure, especially around an equally prickly settler like Cobb to rile them up with stubborn ignorance and machismo, but their protection was a useful thing to have in the barren desert, their thousands of years of knowledge both sword and shield. Cobb stood down eventually, enough to listen and learn; Din respected the fact that he knew when to shut up and pay attention once his indignation blew itself out. 

After the fire burned down to embers and Grogu dozed in Din’s arms, safe and warm and content, they’d stayed up talking long into the night with a couple of Tuskens until they, too, left for their tents to sleep. Cobb was a talker, but he had a way of pulling stories from people that was unlike anything Din had seen before; you didn’t even realize you were doing it until you’d spilled your life’s story, admitted to feeling a crippling sense of doubt over ever finding Grogu’s people, and coughed up your private comm code on top of it. However turned around and upside-down Cobb left him, Din didn’t think much of it at the time. Wrote off the cautious thudding of his heart as excitement for the following day’s battle and refused to dwell on the stupid twisting of his stomach every time Cobb smiled his brilliant smile or pressed his warm hand to Din’s shoulder.

Well, he’d certainly thought an awful lot about it since. At least Din had stopped trying to pretend he hadn’t been completely infatuated with Cobb since that night. He had better things to do than lie to himself, even if infatuation was no longer quite the word for it.

Maybe he could afford not to dwell on it after all. 

Temperatures in the desert dropped precipitously once the suns set. Outside, the air was fresh and cool, only faintly smelling of dust, but Din actually shivered a little, reminded that he had come out in nothing but shorts and a thin robe. He pulled it tighter around himself, however ineffectually. Cobb’s moisture vaporator hummed contentedly in the background, the only other sound besides the wind, Din’s breathing, and unknown, far-off creatures in the dark.

A dark shape, little more than a shadowy outline punctuated by the glowing cherry of a cigarette, made Din jump as he climbed the last step to the roof. Cobb.

At Din’s appearance, he startled much more dramatically, nearly toppling sideways in his chair with a yelp and a curse. A metal cup clattered to the ground, making him swear again, this time more from irritation than surprise.

“What the kr—Din?” Cobb asked, righting himself ungracefully. “What are you doing up?”

“Couldn’t sleep,” Din answered. He squinted into the darkness and regretted, momentarily, not having night vision capabilities. After a few seconds, Cobb’s outline resolved into something clearer, then the details of his face as Din stepped closer. Moonlight and shadows, smoke and sand. “Sorry for startling you. I just wanted some air.”

Cobb blew out a short breath, dispelling tabac smoke, and waved it off. “No trouble. Just didn’t expect to see anyone else up here so late.”

With his eyes adjusting, Din could make out a few cushions strewn about up here, along with a weatherbeaten rug and bucket for cigarette butts. Just one chair; clearly this was Cobb’s personal escape. It looked more lived-in than his actual house.

“I can go,” Din offered. “Wouldn’t have come up here to intrude if I’d known—”

“Sit your ass down,” Cobb interrupted. A smile lurked in his voice. “Look at you, so damn formal in your robe and—are those my shorts?”

Din froze. “They might be,” he said after a second.

“Well, if you can steal a man’s shorts, you can intrude on his private time, is what I always say.”

Din snorted but obeyed. There wasn’t much choice of where to park himself, so he settled on a cushion next to Cobb’s chair and pulled his legs close to his body for warmth, elbows resting on his knees.

“Want a smoke?” asked Cobb.

“Do I strike you as a smoker?”

“Alright, alright, just being polite. Don’t go gettin’ my shorts in a bunch.” 

Cobb chuckled at his own joke, which made Din roll his eyes, biting back a smile. There was a flash of white teeth in the dark as Cobb grinned. As if he knew. Still smug, he took a drag off his cigarette and blew the smoke away from Din in a long, slow stream. Din could picture the curl of his long fingers around the cigarette and tilted his head skyward instead. The cold light of the moons and desert windsong soon lulled his eyes closed. Not sleeping, but looking inward. That was almost as much of a relief to his tired bones.

Silence was what they’d both come here for, and solitude. Cobb’s company wasn’t unwelcome and he didn’t seem to mind Din’s, but the quiet, as it fell, wasn’t completely relaxing. Not a confident sort of peace. Not yet. Din still didn’t know how to make his heart stop beating so fast around Cobb; his body lit up in his presence, a finely tuned antenna primed for every shift and sigh. It made his hair want to stand on end. But it was enjoyable too, in a somewhat masochistic way, to be so unnerved: there was a rare pleasure in someone whose presence was easy and comforting but too thrilling to be entirely comfortable. 

Maybe it said something about Din that he wasn’t sure how to exist if his body wasn’t in fight or flight mode. Even if that crackle on the air came from something as simple as proximity to someone he wanted to touch.

“Thank you,” he said quietly, apropos of nothing. He roused himself to look down at his hands, his thick fingers and ragged cuticles he’d taken to chewing without gloves to discourage the nervous habit. “For taking me in like this. I don’t know if I said that yet. I showed up out of the blue and shouldn’t have presumed upon your hospitality the way I did.”

Cobb hummed a little, though not in disagreement. Din couldn’t tell which part he was responding to until he murmured, “Yeah, you should have. I’m glad you did.”

A few seconds ticked by, thoughtful.

“You’re not really okay, are you, Din?” Cobb asked at length. His voice was very soft, barely louder than the wind sighing across the dunes. So quiet that Din probably could’ve pretended not to have heard it, if he so chose. “You hide it well enough, but I don’t think you are at all.”

Din sucked in a breath. The question, the voice, all of it sent a soft shiver through him. No, he couldn’t ignore it, but nor could he quite find the words to answer. To agree would be to admit it was true; to admit it was true was nothing he could face with open eyes and a clear heart. He’d been not okay in the past, of course. Plenty of times. But not being okay meant running, more jobs, money, change and destruction and telling himself it was just the Way. The Way was how one got on with it. A purpose, if an empty one. Not everything had to be more noble than that.

Din could also be an impressive bullshitter sometimes. To himself, anyway. 

The truth was he had never stopped running long enough to acknowledge it before. Grogu had brought him close; Omera had raised the questions on Sorgan even if Din wasn’t prepared to answer them back then. With a child to protect, it was easier to cling to reasons to press on than pause to think too hard.

If he admitted it now, it could mean he might have to run again. He didn’t know if he was ready for that, not when Cobb was here, close enough to kiss. Better not to think about the alternative at all.

With a shuddering sigh, Din dropped his head to hang loose between his shoulders. When he found his voice, all he could manage was a single word, plea and refusal both. “Cobb.”

“Yeah, darlin’, I know.”

The chair gave a quiet creak as Cobb shifted. He reached out to lay a tentative hand upon Din’s nape. The touch was softly possessive, grounding, the press of his fingers warm. A shiver made the hairs on the back of Din’s neck stand up as if they meant to stretch towards Cobb, and every atom in his body felt like it came alive at once. Harshing out another shaky exhale, Din let his eyes drift shut.

Cobb made an encouraging sound. He trailed his hand a little ways down Din’s spine, just feeling the silk beneath his fingertips and lighting up nerves as he went, then back up into Din’s hair. 

Din’s mouth fell open a little when he tightened his grip. Not painful, but testing. At Din’s soft noise, Cobb, paradoxically, gentled his touch and settled for stroking soothingly along his scalp instead. Nearly petting. Without conscious thought, Din leaned his head toward it like a purring loth-cat. Lazily he opened his eyes and found Cobb staring back, though it was hardly more distinct than eye-shine in the dark.

“What is it you need from me?” Cobb asked.

“Don’t ask me that,” Din answered. Only a bit of desperation had started to creep into his voice, not yet panic but not far off either. Worse still: it was a pointless effort to try to put him off. Cobb never gave up that easy for anything, and he wasn’t going to stop being a hard-edged bastard just because Din was _scared_.

Cobb huffed. “Kriff, Din, didja always dance around the point this much, or am I just special?” 

“It’s not that simple.”

“It can be.” Unbidden, Din flashed back to his last conversation with Cobb aboard the Razor Crest. He’d been trying so hard to keep it at the back of his mind since landing here, but Cobb’s words leaped to the forefront now. _I need you to say it, sweetheart_. “Tell me.”

It was one matter to give Cobb his life story around a campfire; that was just a series of events, facts, things that had happened in a time come and gone. Ancient history. Certainly Din still mourned his parents, but after almost four decades, talking about his past didn’t feel like reopening a painful wound anymore. His relationship with grief was an old lover's truce. 

This thing Cobb asked of him now... That was different. But he would know that too and wanted Din’s truth anyway. What he offered with hands outstretched was the farthest definition from easy. What he asked of Din back could only be as difficult. Blood for blood. Vow for vow.

Creed… for creed.

Much like the safety of his helmet, Din found himself grateful for the cover of night. It was mercy, of a kind, that Cobb couldn’t see him as he swallowed and forced out, “Lie down with me.” 

He’d gotten so used to not sleeping alone, but he didn’t think he could explain how it had felt to fall asleep to a small body tucked against his, soothed by Grogu’s quiet snores in the darkness of their rack. His absence was deafening. The absence of Grogu’s _promise_ was deafening. Din could hardly hear anything for the pounding of blood in his ears, the loss of a future and a life he’d come to want suddenly that much more unbearable, a rising shriek like wind, like a dying sun.

How did Din explain that in finding something to protect, he’d felt safe enough to sleep soundly for the first time in years? Grogu had been his guiding star. He was adrift, now, with nothing to fight for and no creed to uphold, directionless. Sleep wouldn’t come. What the future wanted for him was meant for someone else.

“Lie down with me. I just need to—” His voice broke on him, finally giving up the ghost. “I just want to rest.”

If he’d expected Cobb to have something to say to that, he shouldn’t have; the man was so endlessly contrary that Din might have learned by now to anticipate the wrong thing. Quieter than Din had ever seen him, Cobb put out his cigarette and led them back inside the house and downstairs to his room, hand clasped warmly around Din’s.

The light of home revealed Din wasn’t the only one already—or still—dressed for bed. Cobb had gone to the roof wearing a loose, gauzy pair of sleep pants and a different robe, barefoot and hair tousled, and Din was late in realizing what that meant.

“You couldn’t sleep either,” he said.

“No.” 

“That happen often?”

Cobb shot Din a wry look. “Strangely enough, not really.” He shrugged the robe off his shoulders and tossed it on a nearby chair before he planted one knee on the bed. Din’s breath caught. Cobb’s body was leanly familiar, an echo of a long-ago holocall, slim but muscular through his chest and arms. His chest hair swirled around his nipples and up to his collar bones, dark and silvery. Were he to turn his back, Din’s hands would have found the edges of his scar without looking. “Kill the light, would you?”

Din killed the light. Fumbled it a little as he looked away from Cobb a second too late. But he was thankful for the dark as he disrobed and let it fall to the floor. Cobb watched unsubtly. Din blushed to the tips of his ears, glad that wasn’t visible either. He smoothed down his hair pointlessly and got into bed, facing away; the sheets had been abandoned just long enough to grow cool. A moment later the mattress dipped behind him when Cobb crawled under the blankets, and he pulled them up to cover them both.

He was very warm. The warmth grew nearer and materialized into a long line of heat as Cobb shifted closer, sending shivers racing through Din’s whole body as their legs brushed, feet and calves and Cobb’s knees nudging the back of Din’s like two parentheses slotting together. A whole sun felt like it was blazing beneath Din’s skin, so hotly aware and alive. Then Cobb lifted a hand, hovering. Breath ghosted over the shell of Din’s ear and the nape of his neck, making him long to turn around and find the clever heat of Cobb's mouth.

“Can I—” Cobb began and let the rest go unspoken.

Jerkily Din nodded. Then he said, “Yeah. Please,” like he might not die if Cobb changed his mind. But he didn’t, and Din didn’t die, and Cobb settled his hand softly upon Din’s side. 

A moment later he tucked himself even closer and slid his whole arm around him, fingers splayed and palm burning hot against Din’s chest.

Din breathed. The air truly seemed to enter his lungs for the first time in a long time and rushed to fill all the cracks and corners. “Thank you,” he whispered, and Cobb’s only response was a soft kiss to his shoulder. An answering breath that could have come from Din or Cobb or both of them at once.

Such a small thing, to be held. It was nothing, and everything. Din closed his eyes.

Outside, the moons shone on, casting their pale glow for other watchful eyes and whispering secrets for restless souls. They could keep them. Cobb’s bed, tucked away beneath the sand where neither light nor heat could find them, was shrouded almost in perfect dark. His arm was pure beskar, firm and immovable and perfect.

A vow for a vow. Creed for a creed. 

Din slept.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A short(er) update this time. Next week's will be longer!


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I know there was a longer wait this time around, babies, but in my defense, I did show up 15 minutes late with Starbucks and almost 9000 words of porn. Please note the change in tags. Also lol what is pacing.
> 
> TRULY a million billion thanks to [R.C.](rcmclachlan.tumblr.com) and [ghost_teeth](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ghost_teeth/pseuds/ghost_teeth) for the hard love and no-bullshit betas. This would have been a flaming hunk of bantha poop without them, so please go shower them with praise immediately.
> 
> As always, come find me on [Tumblr](nandalorian.tumblr.com)!

Tatooine days all dawned the same: too hot, too bright, too early. Searing sunlight woke Din from the deep slumber he’d dropped into promptly after climbing into bed with Cobb. The bedroom windows were the same as those elsewhere in the house, long and narrow and high up near the ceiling, but not even thick transparisteel and heavy blinds could entirely dim the force of two suns, whose light pushed through every crack and crevice. Waking up somewhere with actual days, not just the unchanging dark of space, was different in and of itself, and his internal clock struggled to keep track. In truth, there was no way of knowing if it was even morning at all.

Or perhaps Din, old and cynical in his ways, was too hasty in his judgement. He was on Tatooine. He was in Cobb’s bed. His helmet was in an entirely different room, and he’d come awake to the man’s arms around him after some of the best sleep of his life. This day hadn’t dawned like any other at all.

He’d slept like the dead. Cobb too, given how they seemingly hadn’t moved all night. The longer he lay there, the more Din became aware of the ache in his hip from having stayed in one position too long. He longed to shift and stretch, get comfortable on his back or opposite side, but Cobb’s arm was such a comforting weight around him that Din lacked the willpower to dislodge it. Intimacy of this kind was so… unknown. The shared warmth beneath the bedcovers. Learning how much—or little—someone shifted in their sleep. Very possibly this was something Cobb didn’t even know about himself, not unless a past lover had told him, and Din filed it away to share tender company with the memory of Grogu’s smile and the fading images of his parents’ faces. It felt like something to be sheltered like a desert flower, precious and rare in the palm of his hand.

The choice was made for him when Cobb, roused by Din’s waking, shifted against him and gave a long, sleepy sigh. It rustled the hair at the back of Din’s neck, as heavy and content as a purr. The small “mmm” that followed as Cobb nosed against the base of Din’s skull was almost overkill, but Din tucked a smile against his pillow at the obnoxious display of hedonism. He wasn’t sure whether Cobb made waking up seem ridiculous or obscene. The warmth that pooled in his belly at Cobb’s casually possessive affection tended to indicate the latter.

“Good morning,” murmured Cobb. He brushed his fingers against Din’s sternum in greeting and tightened his arm around Din’s middle; of course it fit that Cobb would treat daylight as a passing inconvenience. As he adjusted to get comfortable, burrowing close, Din became aware that Cobb was hard, his erection pressing hot and unmistakable against Din’s ass through the thin fabric of their sleep clothes. He could’ve groaned.

Maker save him, but Din was hard too, hard and wanting. The warmth and closeness of the room suddenly took on a very different mood. He swallowed, mouth going dry.

Seeming to realize it around the same time, Cobb shifted, his demeanour going from languid to self-conscious as he tried to angle his hips away, retreating to a safer distance.

“I’m not—” he began awkwardly and abandoned that tack. “Just ignore that.”

Despite his embarrassment Din gave a bemused huff. Dissembling wasn’t one of Cobb’s strong suits. “You don’t have to explain morning wood to me, Vanth,” he drawled in a voice still rusty from sleep.

That earned a chuckle and a tap to Din’s chest in friendly apology. Cobb paused, hesitating for a moment like he might say something else, but then he started to withdraw.

Din caught his arm before he could get far. The silence breathed a question he didn’t have an answer to, except that… he didn’t want Cobb to go. Stars, did he ever not. Perhaps it could be as simple as that—and as complicated. Suddenly Din’s heart was pounding in his chest, a fast, solid throb he could feel in his ears, all the way down to his cock.

He laid his hand over Cobb’s and guided it lower, past his stomach and the old scars that riddled his abdomen towards the waistband of his shorts. There was little point going farther than that; his erection strained towards his belly, hard now for what felt like hours and smearing the front of his shorts wet, begging for contact. Barely more than a small, experimental flex of his fingers was all it took for Cobb to finally, finally touch him where he ached most. 

Both of them might’ve felt it. Cobb exhaled a shaky breath against Din’s ear, body wound tight everywhere they were pressed together, and when he pushed his hand beneath Din’s shorts to wrap his fist around Din’s cock, Din trembled all over and couldn’t stifle a loud moan. Pleasure sang through him like a ringing of beskar: pure and clean and perfect. 

Blind need overtook him and Din arched, pushing himself back against Cobb with shameless longing. All he could think of was how badly he wanted more of that touch and how he might pull Cobb down with him, down into a murky pool of desire where they both might drown happily. Din had always prided himself on his self-control; he’d hardly been a monk, but his sexual experiences had been perfunctory, restrained. Guarded. Two seconds with Cobb’s hands on him and he was all but begging for it, discipline gone. 

Shudders beset him as Cobb scraped his teeth along Din’s earlobe, roughly enough to make his cock jerk in Cobb’s fist; his stomach clenched like he’d been punched, and he gasped Cobb’s name. The sound pulled a ragged groan of “Din, kriffing—fuck—” from Cobb’s chest. His voice was more wrecked than Din had ever heard it, more, even, than when he and Din had stroked themselves off over that holocall and Cobb called his name in orgasm. 

Yet for all his breathlessness, he sounded conflicted. Din hesitated, waiting for some sign of reluctance, but conflict was nowhere to be found in the messy kiss Cobb pressed against his shoulder, almost at the base of his neck. As they strained together, it turned into more of a bite, and Cobb jerked Din’s hips back against him roughly, grinding them together purposefully. 

“Yeah, c’mon,” Din panted. He had one hand wrapped around Cobb’s forearm and reached back blindly with the other to grab his flank. “Cobb, c’mon—fuck me, please.”

Cobb tore his mouth away with a gasp.

“ _Kriff_. Wait.” 

Against all the odds, Cobb let him go, moving away, not closer. The retreat was gentle but happened before Din could quite parse what was happening. Though Cobb kept his hands on Din’s body in a gesture that was probably meant to reassure, there was little room for interpretation in the distance he drove between them. 

“Din, wait,” he said again, with more urgency. “Wait.” Cobb made a frustrated, conflicted noise and finally succeeded in wrenching himself the rest of the way away, like letting Din go physically pained him. “I don’t know that this is a good idea.” He rolled onto his back and pressed a hand over his eyes. Din jerked around and saw his chest rising and falling rapidly with each breath.

Bewildered, he shuffled back to the edge of the mattress to give Cobb a wide berth, equally confused as mortified by the sudden about-face. 

His frustration was crushing. Not that Cobb had changed his mind—Din had more than a few feelings about bodily autonomy and consent when it came to people touching him—but that neither words nor touch seemed capable of bridging this increasingly insurmountable gulf between them. From almost the moment they met, they had fought and flown together like two reunited halves of the same whole. Since returning to Mos Pelgo, most of their conversations felt like they weren’t even speaking Basic anymore. 

Cobb’s desire for him was just about the only thing Din _had_ been sure of. Until now.

“Hey,” he began. Tentatively he shifted closer and propped himself on one arm so he could turn Cobb’s face towards him. No doubt he was looming, but Maker help him, he needed to _see_. “I thought—”

“I know what you thought.” Cobb shook his head and uncovered his eyes, glanced at Din ruefully. “And it’s not—” He stopped himself to utter an incredulous laugh. Perhaps to assure Din of his sincerity or to remind himself of his own, he placed his warm palm over Din’s hip, though he didn’t look at him again. Instead Cobb gazed at the bedroom ceiling like the answer might be written there in code. “Suns above, it’s _really_ not that.” 

Utterly lost, Din shook off Cobb’s hand and started to sit up. He didn’t get far before Cobb stopped him with a firm palm curled about his forearm. When this didn’t meet with more resistance, he tried to jostle him closer, but Din refused to budge further.

Dank farrik, all of a sudden he would have lit himself on fire to be somewhere else. Literally a sarlacc pit would’ve been preferable to the horrible feeling trying to claw its way up his throat. “What.”

“Now don’t you go slinkin’ away to lick your wounds,” Cobb chided. “I’m tryna explain, if you’d bother to let me.”

Reluctantly Din met his eyes. In the warm light of his room, they were very hazel and very wide, long-lashed and sincere. Cobb had picked a fine time to trade his usual temper for earnestness; Din would’ve preferred to quit this conversation with a scowl and make himself scarce for the rest of the day, or maybe forever. He still wanted that, but he’d feel guilty about it with Cobb looking at him like Din had just killed his dog. Din frowned. “No one’s asking you to explain.”

The corner of Cobb’s lips tilted. “I’ll let you have that one just ’cause you clearly have no idea what your face looks like right now.” Din barely had a chance to open his mouth before Cobb stopped him. “Din. Please.” 

That was just dirty pool. Cobb turned onto his side and placed a hand on Din’s neck before he could glance away or retreat to safety, and didn’t that just rankle that he’d come to anticipate Din’s aversion to hard conversations. Held him in place with barely a touch and a look. Din sighed. 

Squeezing the back of Din’s neck in acknowledgement, Cobb continued, “Last we talked about you and me knockin’ boots, you told me I’d never be able to see your face as long as you live. Obviously you got some things you ain’t seen fit to share with me, but—” He furrowed his brow and dropped his eyes to Din’s mouth. Thumbed absently at his jaw before their eyes met again. “I don’t even know if I’m supposed to be looking at you right now, let alone shoving my hands down your pants.”

Din swallowed. One of his hands rested close to an errant tuft of Cobb’s hair, rumpled and awkwardly matted from sleep—a small intimacy that threatened to knock him back. Succumbing to the temptation to touch it, he contemplated, for a moment, the sight of those sandy-grey strands against his thick, rough fingers. It seemed natural to want to stroke the scar on Cobb’s temple next, then his cheek, but Din withdrew his hand. If he kept touching Cobb, he’d never want to stop, the way seawater only made you thirstier.

“I want that too,” he said eventually. “I thought that was self-evident.”

“Y’know, it makes sense that you would say that? Considering you’ve accused _me_ of being too subtle before.”

“I was lying.” 

Cobb gave him a flat look: _No shit_. “Lying’s just about the only thing you _are_ obvious about, even with the helmet,” he said with a twitch of his eyebrow. “Hate to break it to you, partner, but when you aren’t shooting at things, you’re just a sad ol’ pair of eyes and a mouth that don’t say much. Though I'll grant you it's a very pretty mouth.”

Din grit his teeth. “What part of ‘fuck me, please’ was ambiguous?”

“Don't be cute. I've been trying to get you to open up since you got here. I figure if I get you to say one thing that means anything every conversation, I might pull the full story outta you in the next standard year.”

Din’s threshold leapt up to meet him like the ground at the termination of a fall. It shouldn’t have surprised him, but it did, and the lack of forethought on his part made his temper flare hot and vicious. He jerked away and sat up, putting his back to Cobb resentfully. Over his shoulder he snapped, “Why? So you can talk it to death like you do everything else?” 

In his peripheral vision he saw Cobb push himself up to his elbows. Din couldn’t help but glance at him, and it was just as bad as he might’ve expected: Cobb looked resplendent, deceptively indolent with his tanned, bare chest and messy hair, so beautiful that it brought an angry flush to Din’s cheeks all over again. It was almost physically painful not to reach for him, but Din had his pride. He’d walk naked into the desert before yielding, before standing down just because Cobb’s attractiveness made him weak at the knees. Not, however, that it mattered: even if Din were the sort of man to be led around by his cock, Cobb’s tense jawline and flinty eyes signalled that he wouldn’t welcome the touch unless it was to start a fight.

He snorted like he could tell Din was sizing him up and calculating the odds of getting punched. Beyond that, though, he didn’t rise to the bait, and Din felt his fists tighten sympathetically to the show of restraint. “It’d be a start.” 

“Maybe that doesn’t work for me.”

Finally a reaction: Cob twitched his gaze away and clenched his jaw so hard that a muscle leapt in his cheek, rising from the bed with leonine grace to snatch his robe off the chair where he’d discarded it last night. His movements were jerky as he pulled it on in an angry rustle of fabric, covering a flash of the brand on his back that was even more horrible to look upon in daylight. Din nearly flinched at that small glimpse, its echo of what Cobb had been through in his life. The gruesome reminder that Din was not the only one who’d known pain, past or present, made him flush with shame.

Cobb smoothed back his hair with both hands and didn’t bother to belt the robe when he turned back to Din. His eyes were huge and dark and furious as he bit out, “You’re entitled to your boundaries, Din, but forgive me if I’m not particularly interested in ending up like one of tomorrow morning’s regrets.” From his tone, it was clear he might be regretting a few things already.

The rebuttal hit him like a slap, but Din couldn’t immediately look away. They glared at each other for several beats. Cobb won out—or that was how it felt when Din lost the staring contest first. Giving a disgruntled noise, he turned his head so that Cobb couldn’t see his face fall. There were no consoling words or sympathetic touches to call him back; Cobb busied himself at his dresser instead, opening and closing drawers with scarily contained force and an even more terrible quiet. Anger was a much kinder master than indifference; and Din found he didn’t savour how it felt, at all, when Cobb simply let him go.

He clenched his fists in the bedsheets to keep them steady. If Cobb wasn’t looking at him head-on, there was a chance he wouldn’t notice Din’s breaths starting to come faster as his composure slid away like quicksand. Except nothing escaped Cobb’s notice, even despite Din’s best efforts to distract him with smoke and fireworks and hurtful accusations.

That was a foreseeable pitfall, perhaps, of falling in love with someone too clever by half. But then Cobb had never had much use for tact, and he had even less patience for fools. If Din was feeling foolish, well… chances were good that was on him. 

He hated that Cobb was right; he hated that Cobb didn’t even have to come out and say it. Din was just lashing out like a frightened child. Again. Grogu had more emotional intelligence than his father on a good day.

Cobb was halfway around the bed when Din could make himself speak. The words came, but they came slow, and they didn’t come easy. Each of them surfaced hard-fought and painful like stones trying to raise themselves from the bottom of the ocean, reluctantly summoned by spite and sheer strength of will. Din had even less idea of where they came from than he did an understanding of the Force. 

“I want you to look at me,” he choked out. From several feet away, he sensed Cobb stop in his tracks as though an invisible hand had seized him. Din kept his eyes trained on his bony, scarred knees so he wouldn’t have to acknowledge the pity he imagined in Cobb’s expression, his wide eyes and frowning mouth. “I feel like—” 

He had to pause a moment to touch his knuckles to his lips, waiting until the trembling stopped. 

“Take away my ship and my armor, my creed, and it's like there's nothing underneath. Take away my child—” Here Din stopped again. His shoulders were shaking, but he was not going to cry. He _wouldn't_. “I feel like I’m about to disappear.”

At first there was no response, and Din began to resign himself to the possibility that the admission, however agonizing, was too late. That he’d pushed his luck too hard and too far. Silence choked the room so long that he thought Cobb _had_ frozen under some invisible sorcery. But then he heard a quiet exhale, like Cobb had just remembered to breathe, and he sat down very heavily on the bed. 

Din almost jumped a foot to feel Cobb wrap his fingers hesitantly around his wrist. He still refused to look at him until Cobb gave a more insistent tug and a soft mutter of “ _kriffing son of a hutt_ ” under his breath.

“Come here,” he said, more clearly. For a lanky pain in the ass whose hips were barely wider than Din’s left thigh, Cobb was full of wiry, impressive strength. He gave another tug and mostly succeeded in hauling Din back on top of him with only one arm and a scowl, even when Din tried to resist. “Din, come _here_. You want me to look at you, so let me fucking _see you_.”

Excruciatingly he went, returning Cobb’s scowl to cover his humiliation even though he knew it was poor camouflage. His own words kept echoing back to him, ringing in his ears like a blaster bolt to the helmet, and he couldn’t tell whether the prickling warmth in his cheeks was from disgrace at having confessed such a thing, or that Cobb could never just respond to Din’s painful revelations by leaving him the kriff alone. 

“Stubborn sonuvabitch,” Cobb observed, irritation still simmering, but something vulnerable lurked in his expression too, like Din had accidentally skewered them both in attempting to eviscerate himself. 

“Takes one to know one.”

Cobb kissed his teeth, unimpressed by the complaint or maybe accepting of it. He would have made Din’s old combat instructors proud, the way they’d stood tall and unmoved when Din, barely more than a child, beaten and bloody-mouthed and in pain, begged for their mercy. _Again. More. A Mandalorian does not beg. He does not give in. Stand up._ And Din always obeyed until he stopped having to be told. Later he understood they always knew exactly how far to push without breaking. That they saw the measure of him even when Din could not. 

But immediately Din felt the wrongness of the comparison. His wasn’t a childhood he would wish for anyone, much less Grogu, and Cobb was an unstoppable force, but not an unkind one. 

“You knew who I was when you came back here,” Cobb said. “You’ve always known. If you wanted soft, you’d have looked elsewhere. Sorgan, maybe, your beautiful little widow with the kind eyes. But you don’t want soft, because that’s not you either. You want someone who can be strong when you need to be weak. And who’ll let you be strong too.” 

With a growl, Din shoved Cobb in the shoulder. But there was no real force behind it, the gesture or the words, and he didn’t try to leave. He stayed frozen in place with impotent anger and indecision, still straddling Cobb’s hips. Cobb didn’t look surprised by that either.

“Ask me how much I’m starting to regret it,” he managed to force out.

“I wouldn't believe you. ” 

Expression still stormy, Cobb shook his head, but then he moved his hand from Din’s wrist to wind through his hair instead. Held him so Din couldn’t look away without shutting his eyes outright. That was tempting, and Din’s reptile brain sounded a klaxon wail he’d grown all too familiar with since removing his helmet permanently; everything was too much and too difficult to process without the protective barrier of a visor. Self-control was a challenge when his faculties kept wanting to go from zero to overloaded in a heartbeat.

And yet he resisted the temptation to do so, sensing this was a moment he would later regret not being fully present for. If Cobb even gave him another chance to fuck up again. His hand in Din’s hair took him back to last night on the roof. How he’d somehow known how to ground him, centering Din with a combination of patience and—and something more electrifying. Dangerous, maybe, except that the danger wasn’t of being hurt. Just being seen. 

Din couldn’t repress a shiver now either, but he made his arms hold Cobb back. It came alarmingly close to clinging. To make himself feel better, Din revisited his earlier temptation to slide his fingers through that fine silver hair, tipped Cobb’s face up towards him and looked down at him from kissing-close. 

“I want you. I'm fucking crazy about you,” hissed Cobb. Under different circumstances Din almost might’ve laughed at that, how so many of Cobb’s declarations got stuck halfway between fondness and irritation. Din understood the impulse too well, but hearing those words made his heart clench in his chest so hard it was nearly painful. “I couldn’t take my eyes off you when you showed up here covered in head-to-toe beskar and threatening to fight me.” Cobb hesitated, or rather his voice broke, which wasn’t quite the same thing. Din ached for him, with him. “You think I can look away now that I’ve seen your eyes?”

“Too many people have seen my eyes,” Din struggled to say. “That’s the problem.”

“And I bet you tried to fight them too, ornery bastard you are.” The grip of Cobb’s free hand on Din’s hip was fit to bruise. “I don’t care about them. This here’s my town, _my_ bed. The only person I care about you tryna fight is yourself. Because you're mine, and you don't get to make Din Djarin just vanish. I won't let you do that to him.”

A horrible, wounded sound forced its way out of Din’s throat, like an animal trying to claw its way free. “Don’t—”

“Don’t tell me ‘don’t.’ Like I can’t see what you’re doing.” 

Almost viciously, Cobb tightened his hand around Din’s hair. Din gasped and fell more heavily on top of him, excruciatingly, humiliatingly aware that his misery and all their sharp-edged words hadn’t made him less turned-on, that he was hard and getting harder by the second with every angry word that left Cobb’s mouth. Gods, but he could taste his breath from this distance. He wanted to crush their lips together hard enough to bruise; he wanted to chew his mark over every inch of Cobb’s body and rip away the last remaining vestige of his broken creed. Din had never kissed another living soul. He wanted— _needed_ —Cobb to be the one who claimed that from him. No one else was as hungry for it, or as worthy.

Something in Din’s expression made Cobb make a sound low in his throat. He surged up closer and all but shook Din in frustration. “You’re here, and you say you want me too. So are you gonna be here, Din? Or am I just the thing that’s gonna chase you out that door when you get tired of hurting yourself and go back to running instead?”

“I don’t know.”

“‘I don’t know’ isn’t an answer,” Cobb said. “And yes you do.”

Din trembled. Caught between wanting to pull away and press closer, he shook helplessly, like a leaf. Like something rooted in place, an expendable, inessential part of that which gave it life. Indistinguishable from any other by design. A leaf’s only escape was to be plucked, or to fade and break free. Or break free, then fade. Din was so painfully aware that right now he was somewhere between two states. There were no trees on Tatooine, and those that were brought here withered and died. 

But Cobb had lived here his whole life and was more alive than anyone Din had met since Grogu. Both so fully themselves no matter where they were planted, able to put down roots in an endless desert or in a faceless bounty hunter’s life in the void of space. Survivors. And yet they both looked to Din like they, somehow, needed _him_. Like he was wanted for something only they could see. 

“I don’t have words like you do, Cobb,” he gritted out. “You keep asking me for things I can’t give.”

“You came to me,” Cobb reminded him again, the words sharp and bitten-off. His fury had subsided like a sun passing behind a cloud, but he still blazed bright enough that Din felt he ought to avert his eyes. “So don’t tell me ‘can’t’ when what you really mean is ‘won’t.’”

“I want you too,” Din said helplessly. He tightened his arms around Cobb to emphasize his point. “I _need_ you. I’m here, right now, because I need you. Why isn’t that enough?”

“Because it’s not.” Jaw set tight enough to send a muscle leaping in his cheek, Cobb reached up to cup Din’s face. Harder than Din wanted and gentler than he deserved; he could have seized Cobb’s wrist at any time to stop it but didn’t move. “Show me, then. Show me you’re here because you want to belong with someone. With _me_. Not just because you’re scared of being weak and alone and think getting fucked is a solution to feeling nothing.”

Din stilled with a shudder. He lowered his eyes, too stunned to breathe, it felt like, and Cobb for his part lowered a hand to the side of Din’s neck instead. He gave a long, slow exhale, visibly trying to walk himself back from the heated place his words had sprung from. But Cobb was a man of passion: his blood was still up, body slow to shake off anticipation of what might’ve followed. Restraint trembled in his touch as nudged Din’s cheek with his knuckle, a silent entreaty. Of course that was the one thing he wouldn't have a word for. 

At first Din’s gaze landed on the mole upon Cobb cheekbone, lingering on its sweet punctuation, then lifted to find those versicoloured eyes watching him back, steady despite the pounding heart Din could feel beneath him in his chest. His expression had softened, turning tragic and tender at whatever he read in Din’s face, and Cobb slid his gaze to Din’s lips and back up. 

Deliberately, nakedly, Din nodded. The crush of their mouths together was a meeting of mountains, a collision of planets and stars and galaxies, and Din gave himself over to it with a quiet breath as his eyes drifted closed.

Everyone in the galaxy judged a Mandalorian by their creed, as though hiding one’s face in public were testament to some sad half life or deprived existence; even Bo-Katan and her ilk pitied and resented Din for stubbornly upholding the Death Watch’s dogma, as if being raised a certain way were somehow his fault. Surely she’d be disgusted to know Din had named himself _dar’manda_ for showing his face to Grogu and everyone aboard Gideon’s light cruiser. For wanting to show Cobb.

Din had never put much stock in other people’s opinions before, happier for the protection the helmet provided than he was troubled by petty ignorance. But when he felt the warmth of Cobb’s lips against his, tasted his morning breath and felt the softness of his beard against his cheek, he began to understand how epically wrong he’d been. 

The ignorance, all this time, was his. But he could begin making up for it now. Starting with this.

At first Cobb was a passive participant, letting Din drive the kiss, but then he opened his mouth to invite more and moaned at the first tentative touch of Din’s tongue against his. Din made a helpless noise and pressed closer. Grabbing Cobb by the biceps, he rolled him on top, legs wrapped around Cobb’s thin waist in a grappling hold. Cobb didn’t miss a beat. He wound himself around Din just as tightly, taking control and angling Din’s mouth exactly where he wanted it. No room for fear and doubt in the space between. It was all Din could do to hold on and not lose himself entirely to the ringing in his ears and the swelling pressure in his chest. 

Cobb was a maddeningly thorough, deliberate kisser, plunging his tongue into Din’s mouth like he wanted to consume him from the lips down, fucking into him deep and slow and intoxicating. Stealing the air from his lungs and muting his awareness of everything else.

“Maker, you’re beautiful,” Cobb murmured against his lips, stroking his face. He pulled away just enough that he and Din could see each other. “Just in case I don’t get another chance to say that before you’re inclined to punch me for it.”

The sudden swerve into humour could’ve given Din whiplash; as it was, the compliment made him go red to the tips of his ears. He knew he wasn’t wretched-looking, but he’d taken pride in the physical integrity of his armor and never anything more. Cobb’s praise turned his insides to jelly. 

“I like it when you look at me,” he said with raw honesty, testing the weight of the blasphemy on his tongue. Quirking a small smile back, he covered Cobb’s mouth with his hand and watched something electric spark in his eyes. “But I might gag you if you don’t shut up.”

Cobb bit the edge of his palm and wrenched his face away, snorting, “We both know _that_ ain’t true,” but didn’t trouble himself to say more.

Kissing was easy with a teacher like him. Din was an eager study, quick to imitate and note what made Cobb hiss and moan and dig his fingers into his shoulders approvingly. He was handsy and rough and liked to bite, everything from nips against Din’s throat and jaw to a long, hard press of teeth into his bottom lip, teasing the line between pleasure and pain until Din groaned and bit him back, almost vicious enough to break skin. Cobb, half-feral creature that he was, just crowed in delight and clutched him harder.

Awkwardness over his lack of experience took a backseat to such enthusiastic encouragement; the hook of desire in his balls made it hard to worry if he was doing it properly when all he could hear and smell and taste was Cobb and the sparks of pleasure he sent flooding through Din’s body. 

For all their first words to each other had threatened a fight, they’d never actually come to blows; Din saw now how it might’ve gone, fast and ferocious and brutal. Neither willing to yield, pushing themselves and each other until they lay spent and bloody on the ground, as full of resentment as grudging respect for a worthy opponent’s battlefield strength. Din had training and stamina, Cobb a streetfighter’s cunning and spite-fuelled survival instincts. He went all in and held nothing back, and his dominant streak was another matter entirely. Just the thought of it made Din shiver. Made him consider the merits of baring his neck and showing his belly just to see what would happen.

That was what Cobb reduced him to, something alien and barely in control of himself, a man of all feeling and zero logic. All Din’s previous encounters had been too furtive and quick to be called anything remotely like lovemaking, but if that’s what this was, it was no more coordinated than a drunken wrestling match—hands grasping, bodies grinding, gracelessly searching for friction and leverage, the perfect angle at which to rub together. Din was pushing Cobb’s robe off his shoulders and trying to pull his sleep pants down with his feet at the same time, single-mindedly seeking more skin, and Cobb only managed to shove the back of Din’s shorts past his ass. The front of the waistband snagged painfully on his erection.

Din jerked and swore at him, jabbing a knuckle under Cobb’s rib in retaliation, but it just made Cobb break off with a snort and an almighty giggle. “Sorry, sorry,” he got out between laughs, and pushed Din back against the mattress. Whatever he saw just made him laugh harder. “Fuck me, if you could see how you look right now.”

If Cobb was anything to go by, Din had an idea. He was covered in bite marks, stubble burn down his neck and chest, and his hair stuck up like he’d jammed his head in a ship’s thruster. Din’s clumsy attempts to undress him had only succeeded in getting him tangled in his robe, pants trapped awkwardly midthigh. 

It should have looked absurd, but with his eyes bright from humour and mouth obscene pink from Din’s kisses, cock jutting proud and hard against his whipcord-tight abdomen, Din found he couldn’t remember how to swallow, much less make fun of him. Half-undressed on a holocall, Cobb had looked like every kind of sin made flesh. In person he was another kind of dangerous altogether.

“I think he sees something he likes,” Cobb said to himself, eyes going darkly cunning as he read Din’s expression. Perched over Din’s thighs, he sat back on his heels and wrapped a hand around his cock. He cataloged everything from Din’s sharp exhale to the way he tried to bite his lip to contain it. “A fellow could get used to being stared at that way. ’Specially by someone who looks like you do.”

Din didn’t even bother to hide the hitch of his breath this time. His gaze was locked on the sight of Cobb’s hand around his dick, how it looked flushed and slick with precome in the cage of his long fingers, but at Cobb’s words, something in Din’s stomach clenched _hard._ He reached into his shorts to pull out his cock. It was dripping wet already, and Din gripped himself helplessly and gasped, “What do I look like?”

Cobb hissed a groan Din felt from his balls all the way back to his asshole. “Like a man who needs fucking,” he answered roughly. He released his cock to slide his hands up Din’s sides. “Within an inch of his life and then some.” 

Testing innocently for ticklish spots that Din manfully resisted, Cobb paused at his chest, then lifted an eyebrow as he brushed his thumbs across Din’s nipples. He was focused on how they hardened beneath his touch, pebbling obediently, but one corner of his lips quirked when Din shivered. 

Cobb lifted his gaze to Din’s and gently pinched one, gaze going molten at Din’s moan. “You still okay with that, handsome?” 

“Why wouldn’t I be okay with that,” Din gasped, sounding and no doubt looking as poleaxed as he felt. “I wish you’d get on with it.”

With a snort and a tolerant look, Cobb said, “Just making sure,” and proceeded to roll Din’s nipples between his thumbs and fingers, wetting his lips as he did. Din thought he might die from that; he writhed and swore under Cobb’s hands like he was being slowly electrocuted. “Things got a little heavy earlier. We don’t gotta go farther than this if you’re not feeling it.”

“Oh kriff, of course,” Din gasped, but he couldn’t help starting to jerk himself off as Cobb toyed with him. Every twist of fingers sent a bolt of pleasure straight to his dick. It didn’t seem beyond the realm of possibility that Din could come just from this. “Of _course_ you’d be a talker in bed too.”

“I think you like being talked to in bed.” Ignoring Din’s groan of protest, Cobb stopped what he was doing and shushed him impatiently. Din didn’t bother to correct him that he’d never done this in a bed before. A quick handjob or fuck in a cargo hold somewhere had been a luxury. “I’ve had this theory, for a little while, that you might like being told what to do a bit too.”

Din blew out a breath so hard it made his cheeks puff out. He let his head thud back against the mattress; somehow it’d escaped his notice that he and Cobb wrestled their way diagonally across the bed, and he was maybe an inch away from hanging off it. Habit told him to deny it, but staring up at the ceiling, he thought, _What’s the point?_

“A lot a bit,” he admitted.

That seemed to please Cobb—his murmured “mm” sounded oddly like praise. “I’m usually not wrong about these things.” 

He leaned back to remove his robe the rest of the way, then climbed off the bed to strip his pants too. With a wink and a knowing smile, he went to his bedside table. Obligingly Din watched as he hunted for something in one of the drawers until he came away with a glass bottle of lube. Din ached at the sight of him, all that casual beauty and tanned skin on display; Cobb wore his nakedness like he’d been made to be looked at, irrespective of age or scars or anything else. But his eyes, when he crawled back across the bed to settle himself kneeling between Din’s legs, were only for Din. 

He reached for the waistband of Din’s shorts. “Can I take these off?”

“It’d defeat the point if you didn’t,” Din answered drily but lifted his hips so Cobb could pull them down his legs. He kicked them off and planted his feet on the bed. Almost immediately Cobb’s hands returned to him, fingers cool against the inside of Din’s thighs, then meandering higher just to tease behind his balls. Din cursed under his breath when Cobb didn’t go farther than that. 

“I like to hear you say it,” he said. He leaned in and let Din hear the quiet hitch of his breath as their bodies pressed together. A moment later he worked a hand between them to grasp their cocks together. Din, startled, jolted like he’d been shot and grabbed Cobb’s arms, arched against him with his whole body and a low moan. Cobb grinned. Giving them both a stroke, he rolled them onto their sides so that Din could wrap a leg around his hips. “I like to hear you tell me yes, and no… and yes.”

“I will actually beg you to shut the fuck up,” Din panted and kissed him hard before Cobb could think better of it. He could feel Cobb’s smile against his lips and couldn’t help but answer it with one of his own, even as he thrust into the welcoming heat of Cobb’s hand.

Kissing turned to breathing messily into each other’s mouths, and Cobb’s grasping fist somehow turned into one of Din’s legs hitched practically over his shoulder as his middle-aged body, desperate for something only Cobb could give, valiantly rushed to recall the easy flexibility of his youth. Where Cobb put him, he went, and Din felt that now-familiar madness overtake him as Cobb opened him, using his weight to keep Din pinned in place while he thrust deep inside him with two fingers, then three. 

What a strange creature they must have made, a thing of splayed legs and rocking hips, hands disappearing into one another and arms hopelessly entangled. It’d been over a year since anyone had touched Din at all, much less fucked him open with such loving brutality, this savage tenderness. Din did beg, hungrily and in a voice he didn’t know as his own, but it wasn’t for Cobb to shut up and certainly not for him to stop.

“Please fuck me,” he whispered over and over in between yelps and sobs and moans, not all of them his, riding back against Cobb’s hand with senseless want. He had large, well-made fingers as clever as his mouth. With alarming ease he’d found the place inside of Din that lit him up from the inside out, massaging ruthlessly until Din shouted brokenly against the hinge of Cobb’s jaw. If Cobb had said the word, Din would have rolled over and taken him raw. His body couldn’t decide what it wanted; he wanted everything. “I’m good, I’m good, come on.”

Cobb groaned deep in his throat and set his teeth into the tendons of Din’s neck, grasping him tighter with his free hand. A small part of Din buzzed with anxious anticipation when Cobb murmured something unintelligible and started to slow, easing him down before he withdrew his fingers altogether.

“Don’t you dar—” Din attempted to say and lost the rest to Cobb’s single, bruising kiss.

“None of that, darlin’,” he said firmly. He leaned their foreheads together like he _knew_ , helmet to helmet like true Mandalorians, then pressed his lips against the same spot when Din couldn’t control the way it made him tremble. He manoeuvred Din halfway onto his back and slotted up behind him, not so very different from how they’d woken up. “Just hush up. I got what you need.”

What Din needed was to be fucked into another plane of existence, out of himself and back again. For once it seemed he and Cobb were in agreement about something, because Cobb fumbled to slick up, swearing softly under his breath, the first real clue he wasn’t half so in-control as his words suggested. He spread Din apart with an arm hooked under his knee and slowly, so slowly, lined up and started to press the head of his cock inside. Din, eyes nearly rolling black in pleasure, angled his shoulders so he could lean in and kiss the bewilderment right off Cobb’s mouth.

“Oh _shit_ ,” Cobb whispered and reached for the back of Din’s head. Blindly Din reached out until his hand connected with Cobb’s flank, digging his fingers in deep to hang on. He felt the flex and shift of muscle beneath his skin as Cobb slid in even deeper, filled him inexorably. He groaned so low in Din’s ear that Din swore the sound reverberated down his spine.“Din, I—”

 _I need it too._ Mutely Din nodded and worked his hips back to take every inch of him. Cobb was big, a fact his swagger didn’t try to hide, and Din inhaled deep into his lungs. He imagined he could feel Cobb reaching through all the systems of his body, pushing through him like the roots of a tree. It was no easy work; Cobb mouthed the edge of his jaw and shuddered, caught the sweat on Din’s skin and stirred his hair with every hard breath.

“Like that, yeah,” urged Din, their foreheads pressed tight together. This position didn’t give him much leverage to kickstart Cobb where he seemed to have stalled out, shaking. He grabbed harder at his hip, gave him a hard slap and shoved himself back impatiently. Cobb jolted, swore. Even that sparked through him, a kiss from a live wire. Din’s heart was pounding like an addict desperate for more. “ _Shabuir_ , come on.”

“Whatever that meant, it didn’t sound polite,” Cobb panted, though he grinned and gave a retaliatory thrust that shoved Din partway up the bed, message received. Din choked out a moan that caught partway on the urge to laugh; Cobb’s eyes crinkled mirthfully back even as he started to move.

Cobb hadn’t lied, before: he was a rough man, not much softness to him, but for all his beskar’gam had kept the tender parts of him locked away, Din was a rough man too. That was how Cobb fucked him, fast and hard and without quarter. He’d released Din’s leg to grip his hip tightly enough to bruise, pulling him backwards to meet each powerful thrust of his cock. 

Din grunted out, “There, there, harder,” as Cobb nailed his prostate with alarming accuracy and made an ache build and build in his balls that wanted to overtake his whole body. Din shuddered and writhed, unaware of everything that wasn’t Cobb slamming into his ass or his calloused hands on his skin, the scrape of his facial hair against Din’s jaw and neck as they strained and panted together, kisses messy and frantic and Cobb’s shouts like music in his ear. Each thrust jarred a strangled sound from Din more desperate than the last. Through it all Cobb kept a hand on the back of his head to hold their faces close, Din’s elbow hooked around his neck in kind. Locked up in one another, cradling and protective and infinite.

A whimper ripped free of him when Cobb said, “Fuck, _fuck_ ,” and abruptly pulled out, only to shift Din more fully onto his back and spear him again, using the leverage to pound into him savagely. 

Din took Cobb’s weight easily, already reaching for him, though he winced at the stretch through his hip and thigh as Cobb slung his leg back over his shoulder, nearly folding Din in half. His joints protested, muscles still sore from where Gideon had tenderized him, but the sudden new angle drove Cobb deeper, a sharp, relentless pressure that made Din feel like he might black out. His hands spasmed where he clutched at Cobb’s hair and back, skittering over the raised lines of his scar. 

Drunk on the ecstatic intensity of it, Din rocked his hips to meet him thrust for thrust until orgasm went from something to chase to an impending cliff he tried not to dive off without warning. Even without the coaxing touch of a hand on his cock, it waited there, ready to drown him with the force of a tsunami, an ocean whose floor Din’s feet might never find. 

“That’s it,” said Cobb, watching it all play out on Din’s face and some small shift in the tenor of his moans not even Din could hear. His penchant for commanding tenderness had proven to be Din’s undoing before; the sight of Cobb above him was just one more nail in the coffin. Din yielded to his straining body and agonized face as Cobb fucked into him over and over, hard enough to rattle the bedframe and shake Din down to his bones, down to the very atoms of him. His desperate, uncoordinated kiss seized something in Din’s chest that had nothing to do with physical pleasure, though he cried out all the same. Cobb was going to make him come with nothing more than his cock and the sound of his voice. Again.

“Wait,” he grunted in warning, the ache in his hips nigh unbearable now. “Maker, Cobb, I’m gonna—”

“Stop fighting it,” Cobb harshed at him between gasps. 

The muscles in his arms looked tight and painful as he held himself up, hair lank and dripping sweat from exertion, a flush high on his cheeks. His punishing rhythm was starting to stutter as he raced them both to the brink; Din had been playing such a game of loth-cat and mouse with his own pleasure that he was late to realize Cobb was holding back too, trying to get Din there first.

As if he could read Din’s thoughts, he brushed the hair ineffectually off his forehead and brought their faces close. “Just let it happen. I got you.”

In the end it was easier to obey than fight; that was almost never true except where Cobb was concerned. Din started to say his name as the wave came crashing over him, eyes locked on Cobb’s when the release hit, but Cobb sealed it between them in a kiss, hard and biting and possessive like he wanted to lock Din’s pleasure somewhere inside himself. Din let him. He cried out and shook as his cock jerked between them, so oversensitized that relief rode the edge of pain for an endless string of seconds that left him wrung-out and trembling, buzzing with aftershocks.

“Fuck,” Cobb said again, bitten-off and succinct. He gave another couple of thrusts and let the hungry clench of Din’s body take him over the edge too, which he bore with an almighty shudder and a shout.

Eventually they came back to themselves: breathing erratic, skin bruised and flushed and slick with sweat and come, but inevitable that it should be so. Cobb rolled off to his side with a whoosh of a sigh and a groan. Din’s skin felt too tight, thin and sensitive as a snail’s belly, and yet he couldn’t account for the odd curl of relief that went through him when Cobb only moved to shift his weight off him, rather than stop touching entirely. Their knees bumped familiarly against one another and he kept a warm, large palm anchored upon Din’s side as he settled his head on the pillow next to Din’s. Even with his eyes closed, the corner of Cobb’s mouth lifted in quiet pleasure as they let the dust settle and their breaths slow.

Din thumbed the mole beneath Cobb’s eye. His mind was mostly a tired, happy wash of postcoital nothingness like the swirl of hyperspace. Exhaustion weighed down his limbs and threatened to pull him back down into sleep, but a memory drifted to him from the Razor Crest: Cobb’s cheek propped upon his hand, his eyes sated and warm as he watched Din across a holo. 

Din chuckled quietly, mystified and a little awed at what a strange old thing life could be sometimes. Stubborn joys that could poke through the hurt, a seedling growing from ash.

“For a talker, your vocabulary sure is limited in bed,” he commented offhandedly. “‘Fuck, kriff’—very impressive.”

Cobb’s shoulders shook. Lazily he batted at Din’s shoulder but didn’t bother to open his eyes. Din’s face went warm at his smile all the same. “Don’t make me laugh,” he complained, though he shuffled closer. Obliging, Din moved his arm so he could slide it beneath Cobb’s shoulders and tuck him in against his chest. “I ain’t fucked like that since dinosaurs roamed the planet. Everything hurts, and I _will_ cry if anyone tries to touch my dick in the next hour.”

“An hour, huh,” Din answered with a snort. He’d be lucky if he could still get out of bed to piss sometime today, much less go again, but he raked his fingers through Cobb’s hair idly, too sated to give him a hard time. He’d put himself through worse for far less reward, and Cobb’s effort _had_ been pretty exemplary. “Don’t think my ass has much sympathy for you.”

One hazel eye cracked open. “Does it usually?”

Din only briefly considered smothering him with a pillow. “Please shut up.”

“Don’t you tell me shut up.” Cobb’s whole face crinkled around a massive yawn he buried against Din’s neck, along with the rest of his words. He patted Din’s chest ineffectually and said, “Told you already: round here, I’m the one who tells people what to do.”

With an exasperated smile, Din let him have that one and tried to get comfortable instead. Getting the covers untangled and pulled over them took some doing, but he mostly managed without jostling anyone too much. His body protested that movement so vehemently that it was a relief to sink back down against the pillow and go still. Already Cobb’s breaths had started to even out; he was gone. 

The only sensible thing was to shelve everything else for later. It couldn’t be said that Cobb’s ideas were all bad—the too-bright Tatooine dawn hardly seemed an impediment when you’d fucked yourselves unconscious, nor anything else, for that matter. Din pressed a kiss to his forehead and followed him back down into sleep.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Din is definitely fluent in Mando'a, but he mostly uses swearwords like a tourist.
> 
> Shabuir=motherfucker (derogatory)


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Din and Cobb are just another couple of gays forced to move in together during COVID.
> 
> This story probably was due for a bit of fluff and Din being a canon himbo, ~~but don't get too comfortable~~ so enjoy.

The moon Ghomrassen was high in the sky and her sister Guermessa not far behind by the time they emerged from Cobb’s room, blinking into the light like animals too long underground. 

Din’s step had a distinct hitch to it. Rather than grimace, he stretched and found himself biting back a smile like a child who’d gotten away with some minor act of impertinence. Outside of recovering from serious injury, he had never spent so much time in bed. It was a nice change to be sore for some other reason than having recently had the shit beat out of him; in the last twelve hours, he’d been fucked, eaten out, fingered, jerked off, and blown so many times that he might never come again as long as he lived. 

By contrast, the only impediment Cobb seemed to have developed was a knowing smirk as he watched Din limp into the kitchen for water and food after a much-needed detour to the sonic. Din nearly flipped him off but wound up smirking back instead.

Just seeing Cobb’s face made him want to flush. Not from embarrassment—that might be permanently beyond him now, thanks to shock exposure—but because somehow, even after a whole morning, afternoon, and evening finding increasingly creative ways to get off together, Din’s chest still gave a funny little clench every time their eyes met and he caught the smug tilt of Cobb’s lips. 

Partly it was that looking at Cobb triggered too-recent memories of how they’d spent the day: Cobb patiently showing Din how to suck him off; masturbating while Cobb fucked him with four fingers; or Cobb thrusting into him on hands and knees with strict instructions for Din not let go of the headboard. Din had more or less reached the conclusion that Cobb wasn’t human—he was just a depraved imagination and a stubborn refusal to believe in trivialities like “physical limitations” dressed up in a trench coat. 

But mostly it was that Din had spent all that time staring at him, and putting his hands and mouth on him, and it still didn’t feel like enough. He’d be walking funny for days and would happily do it all over again an hour from now if Cobb asked.

He winced as his hip tweaked slightly the wrong way. Maybe tomorrow.

“I like seein’ you like this in my home,” drawled Cobb in that soft twang of his, joining Din at the counter where he’d gone to fetch water. He ran a hand down Din’s back and cozied up behind him, sliding his arms around his waist. Din was still in the stupid robe; he refused to admit he was growing partial to it, how easy it made it to just... be, its expectations so undemanding as to be nonexistent. Beyond slipping back into his thin sleep pants that left little to the imagination, Cobb hadn’t dressed either. He nuzzled Din’s ear, his breath warm and shiver-inducing. “A life of debauchery suits you.”

“I’ve been here a day,” Din deadpanned, turning. Cobb resisted letting him go a moment but then settled his big hands on Din’s hips instead, framing him. Din held Cobb’s eyes over the rim of his water glass as he downed it. Water from the moisture spires tasted metallic and odd, but it was water, and the day had left him parched and ravenous, wrung-out like an old cloth, though not unpleasantly. They were both in need of hydration and carbs. Lots of carbs. 

Din refilled the gass and offered it to Cobb, thrilling a little to see Cobb put his mouth where Din’s had just been, their eyes not leaving each other. Kriff, he was turning into a possessive little troll. 

He cleared his throat, watching the bob of Cobb’s Adam’s apple as he drank, and said, “Might be premature to start putting in for a career change.”

“Why not?” Cobb shrugged, leaned in to bite the curve of Din’s shoulder before he pressed the glass back into Din’s hands with a warm kiss to his cheek, then went to the conservator. 

Rummaging around inside, he fetched them each a beer, plus a plate of leftovers and a couple jars of pickled… something. Din’s stomach didn't discriminate and growled loudly at the sight. Cobb transferred the jars and beer bottles under his arm, an impressive balancing act, so he could grab Din’s ass as he passed. Din jumped, scowled, then scowled harder when Cobb grinned unrepentantly. 

He winked and sauntered over to the kitchen table, saying, “Do what you like, like what you do, et cetera. And I do like doing you.”

Din leveled a bored look at him and leaned back against the counter, legs crossed at the ankles. He’d almost gotten used to this side of Cobb, the man who insisted he was tough and hard but who hadn’t managed to run out of corny jokes and eye roll-inducing endearments since Din showed up. Din didn’t doubt that the darker parts of himself Cobb had alluded to were real; anyone who believed you could live a life like Cobb’s and not turn out a bit twisted was either naive or an idiot. Not that it made Din uncomfortable—they all had skeletons—and Cobb’s penchant for physical affection didn’t quite bother him either. He just didn’t know what to do with the fact that he liked it. All of it. 

“Sounds like you need a real job,” he said in lieu of any of that. 

Cobb shot him a funny look as he sat down. “I have a real job.” He cracked open a beer against the edge of the table, then opened Din’s too and slid it over to him. 

Before it could skid over the side of the table, Din moved to catch it, noting Cobb’s raised eyebrow at his display of reflexes, then sat. He took a swig to hide his smile when Cobb tangled their feet together and dragged his toes up Din’s calf with a warm look.

The plate he’d grabbed was laden with cold meats, bantha cheese, and flatbreads, and he uncapped the jars to unleash the pungent smell of garlic and vinegar and vegetables Din didn’t recognize. By unspoken agreement, they both dug in. Hardly a gourmet feast, and they used their fingers like a pair of animals, but it beat the kriff out of rations and MREs. Din was hungry enough that he would've eaten a dewback. The fact that it was Cobb looking at him across the table in the warm lamplight made it taste like the finest meal Din had ever indulged in.

They were halfway through the plate when there was a loud pounding at the door upstairs. A muffled voice shouted, “Vanth!” followed by more pounding. 

Din and Cobb looked at each other. Cobb had some kind of pepper halfway to his mouth. He frowned but ate it anyway, hesitating for a moment before he stood and wiped his fingers on his pant legs.

“Stay here. I’ll see what that’s about,” he said around his mouthful, then went to answer the door. Whoever it might be, he didn’t seem too bothered about being caught half-dressed, and the person at the door seemed equally unconcerned with disturbing him at this hour. 

Instinctively Din tensed and had to remind himself to relax. Not only was it probably nothing—Cobb knew everyone in town—but in his current state, what did Din think he would do? Flash them to death? He blew out a breath. Old habits died slow.

A moment later it wasn’t Cobb who came down the stairs, but a young human woman with Cobb in tow. She was extremely short, barely tall enough to reach Cobb’s shoulder, and her hair was done up in a multitude of braids that reached past the middle of her back. She had on the dusty muted colours ubiquitous to desert planets and was pulling a scarf down from around her mouth. Vaguely Din recognized her from the last time he’d been in Mos Pelgo. Compared to her animated voice and fiercely gesturing hands, Cobb looked resigned.

Not that the woman seemed any happier. From her exasperated expression as she stormed into the house, saying, “Well maybe if you tried answering your comm—” it was certain she’d known Cobb awhile and didn’t harbour any compunctions about dressing him down. Then again, you didn’t exactly need to know Cobb long to form an opinion about him one way or another. 

Upon seeing Din, she stopped abruptly at the foot of the stairs, eyes going comically wide. Cobb bumped into her back and kissed his teeth in annoyance. “Jo,” he said tiredly.

Jo—and Din did remember that name, she was there when they ambushed the krayt dragon—ignored Cobb in favour of continuing to stare. 

“Hello,” she said robotically. No one had goggled at Din like that since the last time he'd removed his helmet, but clearly it had nothing to do with that. Having someone else see his face got a little less painful every time it happened, and there was no recognition in Jo's gaze, just run-of-the-mill surprise at encountering a person where you’d expected none.

Awkwardly Din lifted a hand. “Hi.”

Cobb shot him a look over Jo’s head, half-apologetic and half-irate. “Sorry for the interruption. Some people”—and Jo caught on quick enough to flash him a glare—“got no manners.” He gestured between them, barely more than a flap of the hand. “Jo, this is Din. Din, Jo.” Whether because he’d honestly forgotten they’d met, or because he didn’t want to mark Din out as the Mandalorian who’d killed the krayt, Cobb didn’t elaborate beyond that.

“Nice to meet you, Din,” Jo said slowly. “Sorry for barging in—Vanth didn’t say he had company.”

“Do I need to?” he retorted.

She just sighed, a drawn-out thing that probably featured in most of their conversations. “Don’t look at me like that. I tried calling first. _Several_ times.”

“We were busy.”

“Yeah, I can see that.” Jo rolled her eyes. For some reason she glanced at Din, which made his eyebrows rise sharply, but her expression was one of commiseration, not censure. She looked peeved enough that he couldn’t suppress a smirk. The facade cracked. Seeming mollified by Din's apparent show of solidarity, she turned back to Cobb. “I won’t take up more of your time, Boss, but I thought you’d like to know there’s a sandstorm coming. Tusken scouts brought word about an hour ago. You know, when I tried to call.”

Cobb gave Din a long-suffering look and crossed the kitchen so he could lean his hip against the counter. “I think what she’s saying is she tried to call,” he murmured.

Din picked up his beer and sipped it innocently. “You’re on your own here, pal.”

The expression he received in kind was betrayed, if indulgent. Cobb's sloe-eyed blink would’ve summoned Din back to bed under more private circumstances, especially accompanied with his low burr of “Thanks, _pal_ ” like they were the only two people in the room. He let the moment simmer before he looked back to Jo, who watched the whole exchange with fascination. 

Visibly summoning an air of patience, Cobb sighed and said, “Sorry I missed your call, Deputy. So: sandstorm’s coming. When do we expect it to hit, and what do you need from me? Should I start making calls?”

“You don’t gotta do nothing,” Jo said, sounding a little offended that Cobb had even asked, but she was still glancing between him and Din the way one might observe creatures in a zoo. Curiosity burned brightly in her expression, a line of interrogation tucked away for later, but didn’t slow her down. “Soon as we got the alert, word went out for people to start battening down the hatches and making sure they’ve got supplies ready in case it drags out. Should be on us in the next twenty-four hours or so—figured you’d want a heads-up too since you’re ‘on vacation’ or whatever.” She lifted her hands to make air quotes, which made Cobb bite back a smile and tilt his head at her in amusement, obviously fond. 

And there it was. Didn’t matter how annoyed someone could be with him, Cobb wore them all down eventually. The man could sell sand to Jawas. “Well, in that case, I appreciate the warning,” he said easily. “But despite appearances, I hadn’t planned on falling off the map completely.”

“Just partially.”

Cobb huffed. “You know, _Deputy_ , I heard there’s a sandstorm comin’—maybe you oughta go make sure the townsfolk are prepared or something. Check on the banthas. Go dig a hole and tell it your problems.” 

The look Jo gave him was drier than the desert they were fighting against. Cobb met it with one of his own, daring her to back down first, and Din watched the impasse play out until the corner of Cobb’s lips quirked and Jo’s eyes crinkled at the corners. 

Cobb paused, his silence turning thoughtful. His voice was less wry when he added, “We oughta send supplies back with the Tuskens. In case. We’ll ride out after the storm clears, thank ’em personally for the early warning.”

Jo’s face too had softened, and she met the suggestion with a nod. Whatever her show of annoyance and easy banter with Cobb, she kept up just as nimbly when talk turned to serious matters. “Already on it, Boss. We’re prepared.”

“And you’ve got everything you need? You and Ceri and the girls?” Cobb gestured vaguely. “We’ve got enough water and rations here if you—”

“We’ll be fine. But I’ll be sure to call you if there’s an emergency. You two just make sure you’re stocked up and secure before the storm, y’hear?” Jo nodded at Din. Throughout the exchange, he’d been content to follow along with his presence mostly ignored, so the sudden inclusion caught him off-guard. “Din, will you be sticking around after the storm passes?” she asked.

He and Cobb exchanged a glance. Cobb’s face was neutral, too carefully so; he glanced away after a moment. Din tried not to read into it. He pulled his gaze away to focus his attention back on Jo. “If Cobb’ll have me, sure.”

At that Cobb blew out a quiet breath, quick enough that Din might’ve imagined it. He knew he hadn’t. “He’ll be here,” Cobb said. “Provided we both survive being trapped in a house together for several days with no escape.” 

The point wasn’t without merit, though Din had never personally experienced a sandstorm before. As luck would have it, he’d managed to avoid them on past jobs on Tatooine or Geonosis, either arriving after they ended or getting the kriff out at the first sign of dust clouds. But it could hardly be much different from hauling targets and total strangers on long trips between systems. Cobb was at least more interesting to talk to, and failing that, Din was good at tuning people out. 

Jo seemed to watch all this play out in his expression. “Give me a call if you find yourself with a body to hide afterwards,” she said sagely, with an eyebrow arched in Cobb’s direction. Her sabacc face was exceptional. “I know a few good spots no one will think to look.”

“Might have to take you up on that.” Din kept his tone even but let Cobb see the small smile that touched his mouth. “He snores like a bantha.”

“One of us has a little honour yet,” Cobb answered, returning the smile with a slow once-over, “so I ain’t gonna give away anyone's secrets. Even though I could.”

A choked-off laugh escaped Jo’s throat. She was already moving towards the stairs like someone had lit her heels on fire. “And on that note, I’m leaving before I see anything I can't unsee. Catch you later, Vanth. Din.”

Cobb gazed at Din a moment longer before he roused himself, followed Jo to the stairs to put a distracted hand on her shoulder. He gave it a fatherly pat. “I’ll make sure my commlink’s on this time, okay?”

“You better.” Seemingly satisfied, Jo looked at Din again. “Nice meeting you, handsome stranger I’ll be grilling Cobb about later,” she said with a wave. “Have a good storm. Remember my offer’s there if you need it.”

“You... too,” answered Din. He couldn’t recall having ever heard anyone on Tatooine wish another person a good day, but it made sense that sitting out sandstorms was practically a national pastime. 

Flashing another smile, Jo mounted the stairs, though she glanced over her shoulder once at Din, then at Cobb, meaningfully. He shooed her off and she went, holding up her hands in a gesture of _okay, I’m going_. When the door had hissed open and closed upstairs, Cobb sighed and put his hands on his hips, turning to Din with a grimace.

“Sorry ’bout that,” he said. “Jo’s great. Takes her job very seriously, as you can see.”

“Mm.” Din dummed his fingers against his beer bottle and gave Cobb a thoughtful look. “She’s loyal to you. Even if she seems to think you might light yourself on fire at any second.” Although maybe that was a Tatooine thing too. Locals tended to bust your balls before they stepped up to help, like they needed you to know you were incompetent but didn’t necessarily want you to die because of it. Peli was like that, a well of good-natured kindness buried beneath a thick layer of sass.

“She’s had reason to, over the years. I wasn’t always the paragon of responsibility you see before you today.” 

“She’s the deputy… marshal?” Jo was tiny and didn’t appear to carry a weapon, but neither of those things necessarily made someone less dangerous. Mostly it made no sense why Mos Pelgo should have a deputy but no marshal. Something didn’t add up.

Cobb snorted. “Nah. Her wife wouldn’t let her go near that job with a ten-foot pole. ’Sides, she’s too smart for grunt work. She’s been working with me for—a while. I’m often tempted to let her just take over.”

“Take over what?” 

Whatever he saw in Din’s furrowed brow called him over. Cobb perched on the edge of the table in front of him, leaning forward to put a hand on Din’s shoulder. He brought their faces close and braced the other hand on his thigh. 

“You really ain’t figured it out yet, huh?” he asked seriously, though with no small amount of amusement. “Here I thought you were just bein’ coy.”

“What the kriff do I have to be coy about?”

Cobb brushed his thumb along Din’s jaw with a crooked smile. “Not much, you wouldn't think, and yet you have your moments. Whether they’re intentional or not—I’m not sure what’s more endearing.” He sighed. Before Din could question whether Cobb had just called him dumb, he continued, “Din. I’m mayor of Mos Pelgo. Jo’s deputy mayor. Though she could probably run this whole place herself with one hand tied behind her back.”

“Mayor,” Din repeated. “You.”

“Well don’t say it like _that_.” 

Drawing away, Cobb rolled his eyes and folded his arms, though his expression stayed fond when Din put a hand on his knee. He might’ve read it as apologetic or patronizing or congratulatory; Din wasn’t sure how he intended it, but it was none of those, exactly. He withdrew in sudden annoyance that this had been staring him in the face this whole time and settled his fists on his thighs instead. His cheeks felt hot and red with humilitation.

“We’ve kept in contact ever since I first came to Mos Pelgo,” he said, voice tight. “You never mentioned it.” 

Come to that, they’d spent the whole day in bed, and it hadn't come up once despite what must've been numerous opportunities. Sure, Cobb could talk the paint off a barn, and it had been hard _not_ to respond to his many questions about what Din planned to do next, even if it made for a one-sided exchange. Their conversations, when they weren't otherwise too preoccupied to talk, had been full of gentle ribbing about how Din should spend the foreseeable future doing nothing more exciting than sleeping in, watching trashy holodramas on the couch, and amusing himself in Cobb's bed rather than going straight back to bounty hunting, which Cobb dismissed as a lack of imagination.

“Give yourself a damn break," he'd said with a fond roll of his eyes when Din tried to direct the subject away from himself. "Kriff—jerk off, learn some bad habits, take up hand embroidery for all I care. Point is you don’t gotta _do_ anything while you're here.”

Din had been quick to contradict him, replacing arguments with kisses when Cobb wouldn’t let up about it. That led to more sex, sleep, more charged banter upon waking, lather, rinse, repeat. Now that Din was conscious of it, they tended to fall into a pattern of friendly badgering and urgent fucking before he could probe too heavily into Cobb’s life or anything else.

Holes in his backstory, broad strokes that seemed broader and more indistinct the longer Din examined them. It didn’t make him suspicious. It just… bothered him like a persistently painful hangnail. Trouble was, he didn’t have much of a leg to stand on. He’d been selective about his own information-sharing habits as well, and athletic sex made for a good distraction. For both of them, apparently.

He was silent for too long. Cobb met his gaze forcefully. “You mighta noticed things are different around here,” he said like that explained everything. “Word got out about the krayt dragon being gone, and people started moving here from Mos Espa and Mos Eisley to start fresh, get away from all the bad business and crime. Town got bigger, and folks decided to form a local council. For some reason they decided to elect me as mayor. Can’t say it’s all that different from what I was doing before, but I guess they wanted to put a ring on it.” He shrugged. “That enough exposition for you, partner?”

“Don’t be a dick.”

Side-eyeing Din for a lengthy enough pause that it seemed he might dig in his heels, Cobb surprised him by backing down with a sigh of, “Yeah, alright.”

He shrugged and ducked his head with the first show of real humility Din had seen from him. Inconvenient, considering Din wanted to be annoyed with him right back.

“Cobb Vanth’s gone legit,” said Cobb with no small amount of irony. “I suppose I have you to thank for that, in a roundabout way. I wasn’t sure they’d still have a use for me once I gave the armor back.”

“All I did was kill the thing,” said Din, tracking the small shifts of Cobb’s expression. “You and your people did most of the work.”

“We seem to remember things very differently.”

“Hm.”

For a few moments they watched each other like wary animals. Din was aware of his increasingly taciturn silence but didn't know how to course correct. The conversation had turned on him, tripped him into a kind of freefall where Cobb's motives seemed no less suspect than his own, and Din couldn't say what those were. He was barely sure what he was even sore about. 

Of all things he might’ve expected Cobb to do next, it wasn’t sliding into Din’s lap with a hum and a thoughtful expression. Din fumbled to adjust and bring his arms around Cobb’s waist to stabilize him, even as Cobb hooked his hands behind Din’s neck. He was heavy, substantial as a man over six feet tall would be, but it wasn’t his weight that made Din feel vulnerable.

Cobb laid a hand along his cheek, tipping Din’s head upwards. “Now why are you makin’ a face like that?” he asked. “Somehow I don’t think it’s just because you think I’m a terrible choice of mayor.”

Din was reluctant to meet his eyes, especially not at this close distance; Cobb was already too good at reading his expressions to need the extra leg up. He tilted his face away from the touch and was quiet awhile longer, gaze fixed on the vicinity of Cobb’s collarbone, then said, “I don’t like being left in the dark. And I don’t like feeling like an idiot when someone changes the story around on me.” 

The amusement faded from Cobb’s face. “Is that what you think I’m doing?”

“Fuck. Maybe. I don’t know.” Frustrated, Din gave a huff and couldn’t decide whether he wanted Cobb to get off him or stay exactly where he was. He lifted his gaze to Cobb’s chin but no higher. “It’s pretty hypocritical that you’ve accused me of not talking enough when you’ve told me even less about what’s going on with you.” 

“I am often a hypocrite,” Cobb agreed. Din couldn’t begin to parse his tone. It wasn’t sarcasm.

He paused. Hesitating. Cobb waited him out until eventually Din ventured, “Is that actually the case, or is it because I’ve had my head shoved too far up my own ass to notice?”

“Whoa, hey. That's not it,” answered Cobb. “Or if you have, it was for a good reason. A very good reason.” He said it automatically, with certainty, but then he fell silent too. Long fingers tangled through Din’s curls after a second, gripping slightly. Din still wouldn’t look at him directly. In his peripheral vision, however, he could see Cobb weighing his words carefully. “I talk a lot of bullshit, Din. I won't say I don’t like hearin’ myself speak, but ninety percent of the time, it’s just talk. You know?”

“Not really.” 

Din couldn’t relate; he hated listening to most people. Not Cobb, though. Bullshit or not, his words were a kind of magic. Kuiil and the Armorer had been like that too, but they’d chosen when to speak more deliberately than anyone, and Din cared what they had to say even when he didn’t want to hear it. With strangers, peace and quiet was almost always preferable to speaking for the sake of filling a silence. You might as well throw a fistful of sand into the ocean because you thought there was too much water. There’d always be more.

That probably wasn’t what Cobb was trying to tell him.

“Folks tend to offer information more freely when they think you’re the same,” said Cobb, not quite repentantly. He wet his lips and slid his attention back to Din’s face. He looked more wary now. “Don’t feel bad about the fact that I’ve had plenty of practice; I got other methods of getting people to talk too that I’m less proud of. But in your case…” He let that hang there, then shrugged one shoulder, petted Din’s hair apologetically. “There ain’t nothin’ else to it, sweetheart. I just happen to like the sound of your voice more than my own, if you can believe it.”

Despite himself Din snorted. “The feeling’s mutual,” he said, a bit strangled. He adjusted his hold on Cobb’s waist and didn’t add anything else. There didn’t seem to be a point.

Cobb stroked his hair back from his face. “I didn’t tell you about my stuff because I figured you weren’t much interested in hearin’ about some backwater mayor while you were off being a big damn hero,” he said softly. “Maybe I was jealous or—dunno. But there never seemed a good time to bring it up in between your stories of Mandalorian princesses and giant fucking murder spiders and mysterious Jedi ladies. Mos Pelgo’s just a bit anticlimactic by comparison.”

“Cobb, anticlimactic is _what I want_.” 

Din should have said more, should’ve kicked his own ass across town and back for even breathing a word about hypocrisy with the Darksaber sitting untouched, unexplained, and unacknowledged in another room. But he also wasn’t lying; Din wanted, more than anything, to live in uninteresting times. That had to count for something. 

As a kind of peace offering, he leaned in and kissed Cobb once, gently, on the mouth. Pulled away and kept their foreheads bent together. “You’re not a terrible choice of mayor,” he murmured. “People look up to you, and you care about what happens to them. Just do me a favour and tell me next time you get elected to office.” 

The look Cobb sent him was faintly scandalized. He was about to play it off with humour, and Din would let him. Cobb didn’t need to be told a thing twice. “You got plans for me to become mayor of someplace else?”

“Can it be somewhere with actual rain and a dragon population of zero?”

Cobb crowed a laugh. Apparently delighted, he directed Din's face up and gave him a kiss with considerably more force behind it, fingers clenching in his hair like a reward.

“I’ll see what I can do,” he chuckled, then kissed Din again more briefly. With a grimace of _I’m too old for this_ that Din recognized all too well, he slid off Din’s lap and stood, stretching out his back. When he turned back, his face was more businesslike, though the mischievous glint had yet to fade from his eyes entirely.

“Whaddya say we park it on the couch for the rest of the night, then get some sleep? _Actual_ sleep," he added off Din's look of disbelief. "Jo’ll tell me it’s not necessary, but I’m going to head out at first light, make sure everyone’s ready for the storm. You don’t gotta come if you’d rather sleep.”

That didn’t come as a shock; nothing about Cobb indicated he was a hands-off person, even if he'd technically spent the day in bed. Din was a little surprised he’d lasted this long. “I’ll join you,” he said. “I need to find something to wear that doesn’t knot in front or belong in an incinerator.” Before Cobb could say anything, Din cut him off. “Don’t even mention the kriffing robe.”

Cobb snapped his mouth closed with a wry look. “I wasn’t gonna mention the robe.”

“I could hear you thinking it.”

“Nope.” Oddly flushed, Cobb cleared his throat. “I was actually gonna say I may have grabbed you some clothes already. Yesterday.”

Din blinked. “You bought me clothes.”

Scowling, Cobb waved him off and grabbed his beer off the table. He stalked over to the couch and flung himself down while Din looked on in growing amusement. Or he decided to call the odd feeling in his chest amusement, anyway. It wasn’t like he had a lot of experience with people buying him things. Especially not like this. The last time anyone voluntarily clothed him was when he was still a foundling.

“Don’t make it a big thing,” said Cobb defensively despite Din’s silence. “It’s just a couple of shirts and a pair of pants, and you’re on your own from here on out. I wasn’t about to let you leave the house in my clothes. For a bunch of reasons, it would’ve drawn the wrong kind of attention.”

Chances were Din wouldn’t have made it up the stairs in Cobb’s clothes without busting a seam. They weren’t that far apart in height, but Cobb was built very differently, more beanpole than man. Din raised an eyebrow, nevertheless compelled to ask, “Like what?”

Cobb snorted. “Well, among other things, trying to fuck you in public would’ve made a certain impression on people. And I’m not sure it’s the right one.”

A flush rose to Din’s cheeks, almost fast enough to make him lightheaded. Rather than acknowledge how quickly Cobb could get him hot under the collar or further examine the thought of wearing Cobb’s clothes, whether his own or the stuff he’d bought, Din stood and went to the couch. Kneeling to straddle Cobb’s hips, he leaned forward and gently pinned Cobb’s wrists against the seat cushion on either side of his head. Curiously there was no resistance on Cobb’s part, but he did swallow, Adam’s apple bobbing enticingly. 

“You really ought to talk to someone about this possessive streak of yours,” Din murmured, their faces close.

Cobb flashed him a look. “I’m not possessive.”

“Really.”

“I—no,” he answered, fumbling. Din’s mouth twitched to see him wrong-footed. With a huff, Cobb shifted beneath Din’s weight. “Protective, maybe. But kriff, I don't _own_ you. And the shit I say in bed notwithstanding, I'm not the jealous sort. I just like—” He hesitated. He met Din's eyes with a steadiness he couldn't seem to find with his words. “I like the people I care about to know I appreciate them. That I want to look after them, whatever form that takes. Am I comin’ on too strong?”

Din smiled. If there was a way to keep his heart from aching at such a thing, he wasn't aware of it. “Maybe. But—” He released one of Cobb’s wrists to reach down and touch his jaw, then kissed his cheek uncertainly. Reassuring them both, maybe. Cobb was looking at him funny and Din was fucked if he had a better answer for him. “I'm no good at being looked after. But I don’t think I’m asking you to stop. Yet.”

Whatever Din’s clumsy attempt to rescue the conversation, Cobb accepted it gracefully. He stroked a couple fingers against Din’s hand where he still had him pinned. “Then good. Because I don’t think I have any plans to stop either. Yet.”

Seeming not to want to elaborate further, he lowered his eyes and folded his bottom lip between his teeth. Din waited him out, sensing there might be more. After a moment Cobb looked back up at him with an intent expression that felt both resigned and critical. He sighed.

“What?” asked Din warily. His blood wanted to run cold at the sudden change in Cobb's demeanour. There’d been enough revelations for one night.

“This storm,” Cobb began. “It’s different each time, but chances are it’s gonna stick around for a few days. Maybe a week, if we’re unlucky.” He gave that a moment to sink in. “You sure you feel like being cooped up in here with me that long?”

Din frowned. “I don’t feel like being cooped up _anywhere_ that long,” he said. “But I lived inside a tin can in space for years; I’m pretty used to it. If I don’t have a choice, I might as well be cooped up with you.”

“’Course you have a choice.” Suddenly Cobb wouldn’t meet Din’s eyes again. “I can find you someplace else to stay no problem. Just say the word.”

Nudging him until Cobb looked at him properly, Din asked, “Would you prefer that?” All things considered, he kept his voice pretty neutral.

Not neutral enough. Cobb shook his head once and scoffed a little. Tentatively he leaned his temple against Din’s wrist, though Din didn’t immediately touch him back. Let him spit out whatever was on his mind first. “I wouldn’t prefer anything. I’m happy havin’ you here; I’ll gladly chain you to my bed for the next six days if you let me, storm or no. But you don’t gotta feel obligated to stay here just ’cause you’re my guest. I doubt a week of living on top of each other is what you had in mind when you landed here.”

“You’re an idiot.” Din sighed. “I didn’t have anything in mind when I landed,” he said. “I wasn’t even sure if you’d still be here. But I’d be lying if I said six days in bed didn’t sound pretty good from where I’m sitting.”

“Yeah?” Cobb’s smirk was tentative, tilting towards smug. The amount of time it took him to get from one to the other could’ve made Din roll his eyes, but somehow it came out as a smile. “You’ll probably regret your decision after a couple days.”

“Of that I have no doubt. Are you trying to give me a head start?”

The grin widened, and the flash of wickedness in Cobb’s gaze was all too familiar by now, but no less heady. “You can if you want. Just know that I have a strict no returns policy. You’re stuck with me now.”

“Sounds horrible.”

“Oh, it will be.”

Din was there to meet him as Cobb craned his head up, leaning forward to fit their mouths together. Releasing his breath through his nose, he stretched out and felt the languid unspooling of Cobb’s muscles beneath him, the way his body easily took Din’s weight and cradled it. Delighted in it.

Vaguely he knew Cobb was right and they’d just signed on for more than either of them had bargained for. In Din’s experience, forced proximity tended to go only one of two ways: either Cobb was someone he’d willingly hide a body with after this, or Din would be taking Jo up on that offer before the week was out. But Din's cynicism had gotten him into hot water before, and something in him yearned towards cautious optimism around Cobb. He was here, they were _both_ here, seemingly invested in something resembling a good outcome, and things would either work out or they wouldn't. There might be little point in examining things too hard beyond that. 

Yet.


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Another short update, but I ask you to consider: porn. Since there might be a slightly longer wait for the next chapter (sorryyy), I thought this might tide everyone over. Consider it a lead-in to the next arc of the story.

Din had been dozing fitfully for some time when a low groan and a sudden jerk from Cobb’s side of the bed roused him to full wakefulness. It was late still, or early—a ways ’til dawn yet, probably—and their bedroom hadn’t yet lost the night’s pleasant coolness that would disappear all too quickly with the morning sun.

Cobb was already drenched with sweat. He’d kicked the blankets away, which was unusual since Din was the one who tended to run hot. Just like it was unusual that the last couple weeks had turned Cobb from someone who slept like the dead to... to someone like Din, restless and beset by endlessly spinning thoughts. Cobb's fine hair was stuck to his forehead, brow deeply furrowed, and distress lurked in the tense set of his jaw, the tight cords of his neck and shoulders. As Din watched, he mumbled a desperate “ _mnngh_ ” and kicked out sharply enough to catch Din in the knee. 

Biting back a curse at the painfully good aim, Din fumbled for the bedside lamp and then reached for him.

Din had gotten a few nights of decent rest upon returning to Mos Pelgo, but that was short-lived. The only upside of being a miserable sleeper was that bad dreams rarely had the chance to drag out before he flinched awake. Grogu had experienced the odd nightmare too, a hallowing feeling for any parent, but especially when you had a sense of what the kid had been through in his relatively long—if very young—life. He always woke, though, whining and mewling and crying huge bantha tears until Din cuddled him close and rocked him back to sleep.

Cobb was different. Good or bad, his dreams rarely roused him. The first time Din had witnessed him in the throes of a night terror, not very long ago now, he'd lain paralyzed with indecision, waiting for Cobb to wake himself up. But he never did, not until Din intervened.

Rather than let him suffer pointlessly, he grabbed Cobb’s shoulder and gently shook him, murmuring, “Cobb, hey,” until he startled awake with a gasp. “C’mon, you’re all right.”

“Fuck!” Cobb flailed a moment and almost caught Din in the face with a confused backhand, which he dodged. Disoriented and squinting into the light, Cobb glanced around uncomprehendingly. Then his eyes found Din and he seemed to remember himself, sucking in a loud breath. It rattled in his throat. “Din?”

“Yeah.” Din settled his palm on Cobb’s chest in what he hoped was a calming gesture, but all he could feel was Cobb’s heart rabbiting beneath his palm and the sharp rise and fall of his chest as he struggled to get his breathing under control. “Don’t panic. Just a bad dream.”

With a curse Cobb flung himself onto his back and pressed a hand over his eyes. He covered Din’s with the other, clutched it tight. “Dank farrik, again?”

“Seems like.” Din shifted closer and propped himself up on his elbow. He turned his hand so their fingers could twine together, but he was watching Cobb’s face. “You okay?”

“Yeah. I guess. Fuck.” Cobb rubbed his eyes hard and scrubbed his hand through his hair before looking at Din. Even in the dim lamplight, or maybe because of it, Din could see the deep shadows beneath his eyes. At this rate they were starting to match. At least when Jo teased Din about looking sleep deprived, she chalked it up to their extended honeymoon phase and not the fact that his subconscious was a shitshow. “I ain’t had dreams like this in years. Fucking unreal.”

“Well, you’re not wrong,” Din couldn’t help but remark, and smiled crookedly at Cobb’s unimpressed glare. More gently he asked, “Same thing as last time?”

Cobb grimaced. “Sort of. Flashes of a big empty room; that was new. But it ended the same way.” He shivered and closed his eyes, going still for a moment as he breathed.

He didn’t need to elaborate; all of his nightmares lately had been of drowning in sand, swallowed by one of Tatooine’s infamous sinkholes. Ceri, Jo’s wife, attributed it to a feeling of conflict somewhere in his life. She had experience as a healer and would nod and frown through Cobb’s halting descriptions like it all made perfect sense. 

Din knew fuck all about dream meanings and didn’t put much stock in them, especially since he rarely remembered his own. Sometimes snippets would linger, ghostly impressions like a half-remembered tune. Usually, though, he just woke up unsettled, aware he’d dreamed something unpleasant but nothing more distinct than that. Haunted by disjointed feelings that left him off-balance for no reason he could pinpoint. 

Cobb insisted he never forgot a single detail, for better or worse. At first he told Din he wasn’t much troubled by the dreams’ meaning either, but after a few days turning up to work exhausted and rattled-looking, Jo had harassed him into talking to her wife.

Whatever it was, it seemed to make Cobb feel better to get it off his chest, even if he claimed not to feel conflicted about anything. 

Din attempted to summon an iota of Ceri’s calming demeanour as he asked, “The sand was… in the room?”

Cobb shook his head. “Nah. This was… something else. Huge empty chamber full of ghosts and echoes, like a—a ruined temple or something. Hard to describe. The whole place felt like standing inside a mirror.” He sketched the size of it with his free hand: _big_. As he let it fall, he turned his head to look at Din. “Sorry I woke you.”

“You didn’t.” Din offered a weak smile that Cobb met with a raised eyebrow. Clearly Din wasn’t the only one who’d made a few observations about his lover’s disturbed sleeping habits of late. “Can I get you something?”

With a slow smirk, Cobb pushed himself up to his elbows, making the sheets pool in his lap. He cocked one knee to the side and let his legs fall open as Din watched. As come-ons went, it was transparent and lazy—leave it to Cobb for a nightmare to put him in the mood—and yet Din still dropped his eyes to trail greedily over the picture he presented, his body lithe and strong and not a little bit inviting in the lamplight, limned by a sheen of sweat. 

Cobb’s smile widened ever so slightly as he inclined his head. He met Din’s eyes from down his nose. “Why? What did you have in mind, sweetheart?”

Din huffed. Cobb made no bones about playing dirty; Din had a weakness for endearments delivered in Cobb’s soft drawl, which Cobb had figured out in no time at all and was happy to exploit at every available opportunity. 

“I was thinking more along the lines of a glass of water,” Din said dryly but played along, sliding his hand farther down Cobb’s chest to his stomach. His abs were firm and warm, the smattering of hair ticklish beneath his palm. Twitching an eyebrow in an otherwise impassive expression, Din lowered his eyes and reached beneath the sheet. “But I guess I can be flexible.”

“Yeah, you’re a real martyr,” Cobb chuckled, then tilted his head back with a groan as Din closed his hand around him. He was half-hard already and jerked a little at the touch. Din wet his lips at the feel of Cobb’s cock thickening in his fist. His stomach never failed to drop to his feet at the sight of Cobb like this, as intoxicatingly sexy as the first time he saw him undressed. Difference was, it wasn’t their first time, and Din no longer saw any reason to hesitate about taking what he wanted.

He yanked the sheet the rest of way off and leaned in to swallow Cobb down.

“Oh fuck, Din,” Cobb moaned. The smile lingered in his voice. He fell back against the pillow and his hands went to Din’s hair. Shakily he wove his fingers through Din’s sleep-mussed waves and got just enough of a grip to send a shiver down Din’s spine. Tight and commanding was what made Din’s insides twist ecstatically. Cobb knew that too.

Six weeks ago Din had never done this before in his life. Now he couldn’t get enough. Cobb had awakened some need in him like he hadn’t been breathing real air before. He sucked Cobb nice and slow, rubbing his tongue along the underside of his shaft and beneath the head as he steadied him with one hand around the base, and he cradled Cobb’s balls in his palm until Cobb let his legs fall open even wider. Unsurprisingly it took no more than a couple of minutes for Cobb to start guiding him up and down, thrusting gently into the heat of Din’s mouth and directing him at a pace that left them both squirming and moaning deep in their throats.

“Just like that, darlin'. You’re so good,” Cobb panted, thighs beginning to shake a little. Din ached at the note of praise in his voice and swallowed around him. Cobb gasped. “Keep doin’ it just like that and you’re gonna make me come. That’s real nice, sweetheart.”

He pulled Din up just enough that he could focus his attention on the head of Cobb’s cock. Obligingly Din kissed it, sloppy and openmouthed, let Cobb feel the wet purse of his lips as he pumped his fist languidly. He met Cobb’s eyes as he worked his tongue beneath the foreskin and gently probed around the slit. Cobb twitched, swore, and with a whine Din pressed his own aching dick against the mattress and slid back down to take Cobb as deep as he could. Not quite far enough to bury his nose in the hair at the base of Cobb’s cock, which still made him cough uncomfortably, but he tried, and Cobb cried out and clenched his fingers in Din’s hair. His hips jerked abortively as he tried to hold back from shoving himself the rest of the way down Din’s throat. Din took all he could, whimpering.

“That’s it, that’s it, yeah,” Cobb chanted over and over, voice strained. He was close, but Din could barely hear him over the throb of his pulse in his ears, the ragged breaths he took in and out through his nose; he read the impending orgasm through Cobb’s trembling legs and rigid muscles, the way his balls had drawn up tight in Din’s hand. He moaned, as desperate as Cobb must be, and Cobb let out a strangled gasp. 

He was pumping forcefully into Din’s mouth, both of them racing him to the point of completion, and he managed to say, “Din, I'm coming—” before Din squeezed his thigh in permission and felt Cobb erupt with a shuddering, shaking shout. Hot pulses of his come flooded Din’s mouth. Din swallowed it all, drinking down Cobb’s cries just as hungrily as his throat constricted around him. 

He stayed where he was for a few moments more, gentling Cobb’s twitching dick with his lips and tongue until the shivers and aftershocks had a chance to subside. Cobb collapsed back against the mattress, chest heaving. It was brief; Din barely had time to pull off him before Cobb hauled him up, dragged him in for a bruising kiss that was wet and wanton and filthy with the way Cobb searched out the traces of himself with his tongue, licking it from the corners of Din’s mouth and biting it off his lips.

Din groaned helplessly. One hand was already on his cock. His limbs managed to cooperate enough for him to straddle Cobb’s leg. He stroked himself in rough jerks, whole body straining for it, and just like that, kissing messily and Cobb’s taste fresh in his mouth, his hands warm on Din’s body, Din came. He trembled all over as he released in sticky splatters over Cobb’s stomach and chest. It painted him up nearly to his chin and pooled in the divot beneath his throat. Cobb grabbed him to hold him steady, murmured nonsense to ease Din through it, but Din could feel his smile between them, delighting as he always did in Din’s undoing. He pulled back with a lascivious lick and grinned at whatever poleaxed expression must be on Din’s face. 

“Well that was pleasant,” Cobb said, thumbing Din’s chin. His eyes, so dark and inviting in the low light, crinkled at the corners and left Din nearly as breathless as his orgasm. “Better than a glass of water, I think.”

Despite himself Din tucked an exasperated snort against Cobb’s jaw. “That’s high praise on Tatooine.” 

Without disentangling himself completely, he crumpled in a heap beside him, still breathing erratically. Din turned Cobb’s face so he could kiss him hard. A lot of the time Cobb liked to pretend he was the unflappable one, but Din felt him melt into the kiss like butter on a hot day.

He broke away smiling and palmed Cobb’s flushed cheek. Lingered on the feeling of beard bristles and stubble beneath the pads of his fingers and warmed himself on Cobb’s smile, on the quiet knowledge that this was his. The fact still snuck up on him sometimes. Playfully Din gave his lower lip a small bite, anticipating that it would earn him a hiss, and chuckled when he was right. 

“Better?”

Cobb pretended to hum noncommittally like he wasn’t still wearing the answer to that question. “Maybe. But I might actually need that glass of water now.”

Din huffed. “Go get it yourself.” He rolled the rest of the way onto his back and gave his cock one last stroke to chase a final shiver, which raced through him like an exceptionally pleasant reminder. “I did my part.”

Although he smirked, Cobb actually did as he was told for once and slouched off the bed. “You certainly did.” 

He leaned over to peck the corner of Din’s mouth. Din caught the back of Cobb’s neck to prolong the kiss a moment more before he let him go, then folded his hands behind his head and looked on appreciatively as Cobb winked and rounded the bed. 

“I’ll even fetch you towel,” he tossed over his shoulder as he padded from the room, “seein’ as how you take such good care of me.”

“Sure, you do that.”

Din closed his eyes and let himself listen to Cobb rustling around in the 'fresher. Smiled to himself. There was a serene intimacy in that, sharing a space with someone and hearing them go about their business elsewhere, distant but so near. Aware of them, both their autonomy and the knowledge that they would return at any moment like planets orbiting each other. It brought calm the way being on the Razor Crest with Grogu had brought calm. A sense of home not in a place but the one you were with. Although belonging to a place helped too. People could always… well.

People left.

With a sigh Din shoved the thought away.

Cobb returned to the room with the promised glass of water and a damp towel, both of which he handed to Din with a kiss. He'd cleaned himself up already, and as he left Din to it, he pulled on a pair of pants and flashed him an affectionate smile.

“I’m not gettin’ back to sleep," he said. “You go ahead, though. We both know how much you love to sleep in.” 

His eyes crinkled at the joke—Din was always the first one up, whatever Cobb's frequent urging for him to linger in bed—and he patted Din's chest before he wandered back out to make a start on the day.

Din waved him off and rolled over onto his side, reached for his chrono on the bedside table. He had been right earlier: not far off from dawn. Work started pretty soon after that, in the cool hours of the morning, and tended to wrap up before the heat got unbearable. One of the first things Din had learned about life in Mos Pelgo was that folks here took their afternoon siestas seriously. If Din were honest, he’d become one of them. It seemed the ultimate hedonism to come home during the day and sleep and fuck and laugh away the worst of the afternoon heat. Made getting out of bed at ass o’clock easier, even if you didn't sleep much.

As tempting as it was to prove Cobb a liar and lay in bed a bit longer, there was little point. Din stretched, extending every limb and finger and vertebrae until things cracked and popped pleasurably, then scrubbed a hand through his hair to catch the ghost of Cobb’s fingers there. In the kitchen, Cobb was going about the business of waking up. Putting the caf on the stove to boil, or scratching at his bare stomach in front of the conservator while he considered what to make for breakfast. Normal sounds from a quiet life together.

Din rose, stretched some more, then went to find him.


	7. Chapter 7

The locals were fond of saying you weren’t a true Tatooinian until your skin dried out, you could taste a coming sandstorm on the breeze, and you stopped noticing the sand in your hair. 

Laid out beneath a busted speeder, Din wiped the sweat off his forehead for what felt like the fiftieth time in the last twenty minutes and blinked it out of his eyes, cursing under his breath at the sting. He yanked down the bandana from around his mouth and nose and pushed his goggles up his forehead. While they helped keep out sand, they did very little for perspiration and had fogged up almost the moment Din pulled them over his eyes. It was hard not to think wistfully of his helmet when everything about this place seemed designed to inconvenience.

This was Tatooine at midday: dry as a rancor’s cunt and hotter than hell. Shadows didn’t dare linger, and everywhere Din looked, heat shimmers danced on the air like staring into a blazing furnace. Not even the heavy canvas tarps that shielded the back of the workshop were a match for the suns’ relentless blaze; so early in the afternoon, just before they reached their zenith, Din was tempted to throw down his spanner and call it a day. The speeder was trashed. No amount of willpower would get that piece of bantha dung fixed in an afternoon. Especially not if he could barely see what he was doing. 

Din may still sweat like a barn animal, but after two months in Mos Pelgo, he wasn’t entirely unchanged: his skin was a deeper shade of gold than he’d ever seen it, and his hair had grown out to temple-length waves, sun-bleached and only a little streaked with grey, that probably wouldn’t fit under a helmet now if he tried. He didn’t recognize himself. It was, however, Cobb’s opinion, when Din caught him staring fondly in the lamplight of their home or tucked close together in bed, that Din looked more at ease in his skin than Cobb had ever seen him. The most himself. That was a thought Din couldn’t examine too closely for fear of what it might yield.

Really, he had just started to resemble his father more with each passing day. Bright, humid Aq Vetina summers always used to render the whole Djarin clan frizzy-haired and bronze, but none so much as Hugo Djarin—and by extension, Din, then still too young to have outgrown the tendency to attach himself to his father at the hip. After so many years, Din’s memories of that face had grown faded and indistinct, but a few times since settling here, Din had caught sight of himself in the mirror and paused, a startled _“Papá?”_ on the tip of his tongue before he realized he was seeing himself as if for the first time.

Din was older now than his father had ever been. Aging was a privilege, yes, but one it was hard not to resent when every day seemed to steal a little more detail from his parents’ features. So too was it impossible not to follow that train of thought to its next logical stop: how long before Grogu forgot Din’s face in turn? Perhaps he’d forgotten already; their relationship had been such a blip in the child’s long life.

But time hadn’t stolen everything of Din’s parents from him. Not yet. Perhaps as long as their memory lived on, there was hope for Din too. 

Funny that Tatooine reminded him of them in these small unexpected ways but yet hadn’t yet claimed him, if the locals were to be believed. Din still marvelled that it was possible for a body to perspire so much, and he doubted he’d notice a coming sandstorm until it was on top of him. Most damning of all, his favourite time of day was when he got to blast the sand out of his hair and beard in the sonic in ruthless revenge. He scratched at his cheek distractedly, scattering particles of sand onto his bandana and the collar of his coveralls, and swiped his nearby canteen so he could swig at it resentfully. Today would be no different.

Elsewhere in the junkyard, a droid gave a squeal that could only be called celebratory. A moment later Din heard his boss Farro let out a whoop from inside the shop. Without consulting his chrono, Din knew what came next: “That’s quittin’ time!” They hollered the same thing each day for Din’s benefit, like the clueless off-worlder couldn’t tell what time it was by temperature alone. Clearly Tatooinians didn’t quite consider him one of them yet either, but at least Farro was kind about it.

Farro was a talented mechanic and as devoted to their small shop as Peli was to getting paid, but no one loved the end of the work day as much as they did. Announcing it each afternoon was their favourite hobby—outside of dismantling old junk and repurposing it for new speeders and spacecraft, of course—and with Din there, they were all too happy to indulge on someone else’s behalf. Din was content to play along since it meant he could get out of the sun and into the nearest ’fresher that much sooner. Plus it had the unexpected effect of bringing a small smile to his face whenever it happened. 

He was brushing the sand off his clothes and ruffling it out of his hair when Farro emerged from the shop. “Din!” they announced, grinning hugely and wiping motor oil on a rag they’d stuffed into the pocket of their faded red coveralls. That smile usually meant nothing good, but with Farro, it was hard to tell. They could be coming to say they’d just won the lottery, or that someone had found another Death Star to blow up, or that they’d framed Din for murder and the authorities were here to arrest him. Life on Tatooine was weird enough that anything was plausible, so he tended not to rule things out on principle.

“What?” Din asked with feigned wariness. “If you’re coming to make sure I know it’s time to go home, I’m pretty sure they heard you in Mos Espa.”

Farro stuck out their tongue, used by now to Din’s dryness. They were small in stature, almost as petite as Jo, but with a voice that echoed over clanging machinery and an attitude that never flinched. They reminded Din of Fennec. He’d never seen Farro start or end a fight with anyone, but their dark eyes had a similar catlike focus, and Din would bet anything they had an iron trigger finger. A long black braid, woven in a spine down the the centre of their head, cracked like the tail of a whip. 

Whatever their steel, Farro was young. A baby just learning the world. Often they made Din feel every one of his forty years, but they had a knack for all things mechanical that bordered on prodigious. No question why Mos Pelgoans trusted them to fix everything from busted speeders to moisture spires to toasters while Din was still fumbling to be useful.

They’d stumbled on Din, all those weeks ago, poking around the scrapyard for something—anything—in need of repair. A project. Boredom on Tatooine was a never-ending kick in the balls: you couldn't think of anything else, but it was too kriffing hot to do much about it. He’d had the idea that there were plenty of things he could take apart from the cool comfort of Cobb's kitchen table. Instead Farro offered him a job.

“I could use another set of hands around here that aren’t battery powered,” they’d said. “If you aren’t busy. Which, no offense, it doesn’t look like you are.”

That was how Din spent his first three weeks at the shop learning to do minor droid repairs, then small appliances and vaporators, and eventually speeders and light spacecraft. It was tempting to argue he already knew his way around ship repairs and that this slow pace was unnecessary, but Farro could name every ship part imaginable and spot problems with Din’s work so quickly that it just shut Din right back up again. He could have used someone like Farro on his crew for the last ten years. Even if that meant Farro would have been barely out of puberty. It wasn’t like Din had never tried to let a child do ship repairs before.

But he liked his job, and he liked Farro. They were a good-natured, kind, and easygoing boss, charmingly fascinated by stories of Din’s travels around the Outer Rim, and the number of people Din was expected to shoot at these days was pretty much zero. It was hard to do better than that for decent pay. Working off the local scrapyard also meant there was no shortage of speeders and other beaten-up crap to practice on and resell for cash. And occasionally salvage came through that was interesting enough to catch even Farro’s discerning eye.

“You’ve gotta come see what’s out back,” they said, electing to turn a deaf ear to Din’s skepticism—something they seemed to have developed a talent for as well. “It came in while you were slaving away on that speeder that should’ve been broken down for parts hours ago.”

“I can save it,” Din said defensively, gesturing with the spanner still in his hand. “I’ll have it working again by tomorrow.”

“It looks like the owner ran it through a sarlacc's digestive system for shits and giggles. Even _I_ couldn’t fix that thing,” Farro deadpanned. Their expression was neutral, but Din could tell when he was being laughed at. “I was just waiting to see how long it would take you to figure it out. Now I guess we know: the limit does not exist.”

His first few days on the scrapyard, Din had been hesitant to flip them off when Farro got especially mouthy. That was pretty much always, so he didn’t hesitate anymore, including now. “So you just let me sweat my balls off out here for nothing. Those are some top-notch supervisory skills, kid.”

“You would’ve done that either way.” Farro flicked a quick up-down look over Din’s damp face and hair, the sweaty patches on his coveralls that no amount of motor oil or engine grease could hide. “How do you still look like a waterlogged sponge after so many weeks here? By now you’d think—”

“Is this what you came to tell me about?” Din interrupted.

“What? No, of course not. I don’t need an excuse to mock you.” Farro waved him off. “Nah, this is way more fun. C’mon.”

“I hate surprises.”

They shrugged in a way that clearly said _sounds like a you problem_ , turned, and walked away, not waiting to see whether or not Din was coming. Din sighed but followed like the pushover he was.

Inside the shop was cramped in a way ubiquitous to garages and scrapyards, a haphazard collection of dead appliances and mechs, half-built droids, and everything else that didn’t quite seem to have a place. It smelled of oil, scorched metal, and dust; a fine layer of sand coated everything no matter how many times a day you swept or dusted. Din did his best to keep things somewhat organized so he didn’t lose his mind—tidiness wasn’t exactly Farro’s strong suit—which Farro pretended to be outraged by until they stopped losing their tools so much.

“What is it?” Din asked, curious but trying not to sound it.

“A ship.”

“A ship?”

“There a fuckin’ echo in here? Yeah, a ship.” With a scowl over their shoulder, Farro shoved a malfunctioning cleaning droid out of the walkway with their foot. The droid made a mournful noise, though whether at the offhand treatment or the mess, Din couldn’t be sure. “If I have to explain starships to you, buddy, we might have to rethink our business arrangement.”

“Kriff off.”

“Later. Do you want to see it or not?” Farro had a knack for wearing Din down, which seemed to be a trait shared by most of his friends, but for once, the question seemed earnest despite the generous helping of sass. Yet again Din could only sigh. Sigh and be glad Cobb didn’t hang around the scrapyard more, because he and Farro together was the kind of headache he didn’t need.

“Fine, okay. Let’s see it,” he said grudgingly, even though he couldn’t deny the frisson of eagerness that curled in his gut. Not fooled by Din’s performance in the least, Farro clapped their hands delightedly and led on.

In spite of their age gap and very different personalities, there was a reason Din liked working with Farro: they both coveted interesting new salvage like a couple of massifs around a fresh kill. Even as a child, Din liked to haunt the scrapyards and landing zones on Aq Vetina to spy on the newest, sleekest ships. After taking the Creed, it was easier to transfer that enthusiasm to weapons; nowhere was it written in stone that he’d ever be allowed outside the covert, let alone off-world in a ship of his own. But with Farro, who openly showed such childlike, uninhibited wonder for all things mechanical, Din felt the old excitement return.

“You’ll like this one, I know it,” said Farro as they pulled their goggles down over their eyes.

Stepping back into the searing sunlight, Din didn’t replace his his own, preferring to use them to keep his hair back off his forehead, but he did shield his eyes with a wince. Going from the dim interior to the shop and back into full daylight never ceased to be blinding. The light that reflected off the scarred, patchy hull of a ship parked outside further seared Din’s retinas, and he hissed under his breath.

He stopped in his tracks and cast a wary look at Farro, who was still grinning like they’d pulled off a particularly clever trick. 

“A... yacht?” He spat the word like a bad taste in his mouth. Or it was what was left of a yacht, anyway. More accurately, it resembled a sea creature that’d had several bites taken out of it before being left for dead. “What the kriff do we want with a yacht?”

Pulling an offended expression—on the ship’s behalf, presumably—Farro scoffed. “Don’t be such a snob, old man. She’s not just any yacht. Tell me what you see before you write her off.”

Din sighed. This was Farro’s way of pulling rank; there was nothing quite like being put in his place by a cocky toddler with the recall of a protocol droid. 

“Baudo-class star yacht,” he recited dutifully. He searched his memory, though he’d personally encountered few of them in his day. Different circles: the Outer Rim wasn’t really glamorous enough for the kind of beings who could afford luxury spacecraft, not unless they were on the run. “Popular in the core if you’ve got money to burn. Looks… heavily modified. At least three extra cannons and a turret.” 

The yachts manufactured by Baudo were first and foremost status symbols, yes, and easy enough for amateur pilots to handle, but they were also fast, athletic, and most importantly, easily adapted for different uses. If no two were the same, it was because they were custom-built according to customers’ exact specifications. This one didn’t look like just one being had had a hand in her design, though. She bore signs of having lived a few different lives. Probably like what people saw when they looked at Din.

“Smuggler ship?” he guessed.

“Mmmm,” agreed Farro. “Or hunter. But either way, this ain’t a playboy starcraft, that’s for sure. She may be flashy, but she’s fast and she’s got claws. Perfect for someone in a volatile line of work who needs to hit hard and disappear quickly.” They paused and pushed their goggles up on their forehead to meet Din’s gaze, leaving behind red impressions on their cheeks. “Know anyone like that?”

He narrowed his eyes. “Why would I?”

“You tell me.”

Din held Farro’s gaze a beat longer before tracking his gaze back to the ship, ignoring the way the back of his neck had started to prickle in awareness of a nearby tripwire. “She’s missing a few teeth,” he said, belatedly steering them back on topic. “Among other things.” 

“You’re missing the bigger picture.”

That sounded likely. Din folded his arms and looked back at Farro, who was suddenly—and conspicuously—not meeting his eyes. “Bigger picture. Right. What else is wrong with her?”

Farro coughed into their fist. “Well. She’s kind of missing her engines.” There it was. But before Din could comment, Farro burst out, “Those are easy! What do you take me for? Long as she’s got good bones, ain’t nothing that can’t be rescued. And I don't know if you've noticed, but we literally work in a scrapyard. We've got spare engines coming out of our asses.”

Though the temptation to roll his eyes was strong, Din could be the bigger person. “Five minutes ago I could have sworn you were telling me not even you could fix that speeder out back. But I’ll bite: What do you plan to do with her?”

Farro faced Din with their hands on their hips. “What do _you_ plan to do with her?”

“Why are you asking _me_?”

“Because she’s a ship. You know, like the kind you’ve been pretending you don’t want but secretly look for every time we get new salvage?”

Din’s face was suddenly warmer than it’d been a second ago: tripwire, meet foot. He wished he could say he’d once been better at not walking headlong into every emotional trap he came across, but not even Tatooine could be blamed for that. “I don’t need a ship,” he said automatically—and not very convincingly. 

“Of course you don’t.” Farro’s gaze was sharper than a laser sight. “No one _needs_ a ship unless they’re some kind of foreign dignitary or a pilot. Or a smuggler.” They paused. “Or a bounty hunter.”

“We aren’t talking about this again.” A year ago Farro had been among the townsfolk who helped bring down the krayt dragon. They weren’t subtle about having made the connection between Din and the mysterious Mandalorian who helped them. Granted, they’d done so faster than most, but Din still wouldn’t confirm or deny anything when Farro brought it up. So he preferred if they just didn’t bring it up. 

He had terrible luck, though, and incredibly annoying friends.

“Talking about what?” Farro gestured aimlessly. “Tatooine’s a rough place. Anyone could be a smuggler or a bounty hunter round here. _I_ could be one.”

“Right. Maybe if you liked talking people to death.”

At that, Farro grinned. “Vanth probably could.”

Despite himself, Din chuckled. It came out sounding fonder than intended, which just made Farro grin even wider. They made no bones about the fact that Din and Cobb’s relationship fascinated them endlessly. The word _adorable_ got thrown around a lot. 

But this wasn’t about Cobb or his and Din’s relationship. And Din was delusional if he thought Farro might be swayed from the topic now that they’d all but thrown down the gauntlet about Din’s past. 

“I don’t know where you got the impression that I’m looking to replace my old ship,” he said carefully. “And even if I were, I don’t have the money for this kind of surgery. Or the skills to do it myself.”

“I got that impression from working with you every day, you nerf herder. But that’s beside the point. You wouldn’t have to do it yourself.” Farro returned Din’s raised eyebrow with a scoff. “What, do you think I’d pass up the chance to rebuild a beauty like this?”

“Not for free.”

“No one’s saying for free. I don’t run a charity.” Folding their arms, they turned to face Din fully. “Look. Consider it a… a professional development opportunity. I won’t just _give_ her to you, but we can come to some sort of agreement. Plus there’s that thing you did for us last year that you won’t talk about.” Helpfully Farro held up their hands in an imitation of claws, bared their teeth, and growled a soft “ _Rawr_ ” in the weakest impression of a krayt dragon Din had ever seen.

“Krayt dragons don’t have claws,” he deadpanned.

Farro’s eyes went round, and they dropped their hands. “Are you actually admitting—”

“I’m not admitting shit.”

“But you _just_ said—”

“All of Tatooine knows Mos Pelgo had a krayt dragon,” Din interrupted in as bland a tone as he could manage. “Plus I live with your mayor. Kind of hard not to hear about it. You know, in passing.”

With another scoff, Farro rolled their eyes. “That’s not the defense you think it is,” they grunted. “Everyone knows Mayor Vanth mooned after that Mando for _months_. No way he woulda just shacked up with some random other guy so fast if you weren’t—”

“We aren’t talking about this, remember?” Din couldn’t help but flush at the mention of Cobb. It was kind of hard to deny when Cobb had flat-out admitted it after all those holocalls, but for some reason, it made Din’s pulse skitter to know other people had noticed Cobb’s infatuation too, back when. Everyone except Din, that is, until Cobb went and called him on it. Figured.

“Sure, sure.” Farro gave him the stink-eye a moment longer before continuing, “Well, if we say we collectively owe you one for that thing we’re not talking about, and you agree to pay for the replacement parts yourself—at cost, of course—then I think you and I could get this pretty lady back in the air in the next three, four months. Less, if we put our minds and droids to it. We can work on her when we’re not busy with other repairs.”

Din waffled. Not because it sounded too good to be true, though it did, but because he couldn’t shake the feeling that Cobb wouldn’t share Farro’s enthusiasm for the project. Building a ship looked an awful lot like a precursor to running away, even if that was the last thing on Din’s mind. He’d run _here_ and hadn’t needed his own ship for that.

He really hadn’t been looking.

“Your offer is generous,” he hedged. “But a ship isn’t something I’m after right now.”

Farro’s look was penetrating. “I don’t believe you,” they said. “But even if I did, you can still sell a ship like this easy. So prove me wrong. Get her flying and pocket the profit.”

“ _Split_ the profit.”

“I just told you I’d help,” Farro reminded him. “Money isn’t the point. It’s the least I can do.”

“The least you can do for what?”

The new voice all but made Farro jump half a foot in the air. Din turned too, but a lifetime of practice made it easier to avoid responding more obviously than that. It would’ve been unnecessary, anyhow. In the doorway stood Jo, looking between them with one eyebrow lifted critically. She could be a force of nature, but Din’s pride prevented him from startling at someone not even five feet tall.

Farro put a hand on their chest and gave a dramatic sigh. “Kriff, Jo, don’t sneak up on a person like that.” Offering a smile, they turned and gestured at the yacht. “Din here’s gonna build himself a ship.”

Jo’s gaze slid over to Din. Her expression was difficult to parse. “You’re building a ship? Since when?”

“Whoa.” Din held up his hands, casting a chastising look at Farro to cover up whatever guilt-stricken thing his face wanted to do. If Jo got the wrong impression… then told Cobb... “We did _not_ agree to that,” he said firmly, though this was directed just as much at Farro, who was grinning like they hadn’t potentially just landed Din in bantha shit. “ _Farro_ agreed. Without help. I just happened to be in the vicinity.”

“So you’re not building a ship,” said Jo.

“He is definitely building a ship. This one specifically.”

“Specifically it was under discussion,” Din corrected them, though it sounded weak to his own ears. Farro was casting their gaze back and forth between Din and Jo like they were watching a game of ping-pong. Jo opened her mouth to respond, but enough was enough. With as much finality as he could manage, Din said, “The discussion is that there’s nothing to discuss. What can we do for you, Deputy?”

Jo snapped her mouth shut again. She frowned, scrutinizing Din in such a way that made it known that this would probably come up again later, but then she sighed and folded her arms. “Cobb asked me to come find you. Got some Tuskens who requested a meeting with us out at their settlement, and we could use your help translating.” She cast an inquiring glance at Farro, acknowledging the chain of command. Normally it didn’t bother Din that he answered to someone else on the yard, but right now it felt an awful lot like being ganged up on. “That is, if Din’s done for the day.”

“I’m free,” Din answered testily. “What do you need me for, though? You and Cobb have been coming along with signing. You especially.” 

Cobb’s Tusken had still been rudimentary when Din came back to Mos Pelgo, but still better compared to his first visit. Enough to get the gist of most conversations, at any rate. Din had been doing his best to teach him during quiet moments in bed with nothing better to do than talk, silent but for quiet breaths while their hands spoke between them—Cobb haltingly, and Din sometimes pausing to adjust the position of his fingers or nod approval. _Pillow book_ , Cobb sometimes called him with a smile, which usually resulted in a pillow to the face, then a lot less talking after that.

Din had been teaching Jo too. She was a quick study, and there was a youngster, Tig, who’d relocated to Mos Pelgo from Bestine and was almost entirely fluent, just not in the vocalizations. Din was used to being included in conversations with Tuskens, but it was usually incidental—often he just happened to be present. No one had specifically asked for him before, and Cobb never mentioned it this morning before Din left.

Jo accepted the compliment with a nod but shrugged one shoulder eloquently. “They weren’t real forthcoming on the specifics, but I think it was a formal request. Something of a ceremony to it. Presented us with black gourds and everything.” 

“And they want us there _now_?” Din cast a skeptical eye towards the suns above. Even that small glance made him grimace reflexively and squint, a habit he was still growing out of after so long beneath the helmet. He was constantly relearning his body’s limitations without his beskar’gam, but riding out into Tusken territory at high noon would almost certainly be one of them. Mostly, though, it made no sense. Midafternoon naps were in all likelihood something the locals had adopted from Tusken survival habits; no one went out at that time of day unless they had to. The people who’d lived on Tatooine thousands of years would know that better than anyone.

“Not now.” Jo watched all this play out on his face with a bemused smile. “We’re expected at the settlement at dusk. It’ll be cooler then, and we’re invited to share a fire with them. C’mon.” She beckoned. “Cobb can fill you in on the rest.”

Din nodded but turned to Farro. “I guess I have my marching orders,” he said. “Do you need—”

“Get out of here.” Farro flashed a crooked smile, waving off Din’s offer of help before it could pass his lips. “You’re gonna need to hit the fresher before you embark on any diplomatic missions; you stink.”

“He still sweats from his eyeballs, poor thing,” Jo said knowingly, and she and Farro shared a conspiratorial laugh that made Din roll his eyes.

“You’re both hilarious,” he said and started to push past them. But he cast one final look at the ship, tried to picture her shined up and whole, looking beyond her obvious faults and his own reservations to the possibilities underneath. She could be something. 

Maybe even Cobb would see it that way too, if he didn’t hate the idea entirely.

When Din turned, he found Farro already watching him, expression quietly pleased.

“I’ll think about it,” he promised, which just made Farro smile wider. Din waved them off with a huff and set out into town with Jo at his side.

Activity buzzed as shops and market stalls prepared to close up for the afternoon, though the few cafeterias and cantinas in town made ready for an influx of customers. Miners would be returning from work, and not everyone liked to sleep away the heat when they could drink or gamble instead. Din’s only thought was getting home and into the sonic. Fixed his mind on it to avoid noticing the absence of conversation like a conspicuous lack of a breeze.

Din slowed his pace so Jo wouldn’t have to rush to keep up. Where talking was concerned, she could give as good as she got with Cobb in the room, but around Din she was often quiet, unconcerned by his silences and lengthy pauses. She had a restful presence he tended to seek out by mutual agreement when she needed a break from her kids and he needed an excuse not to speak for a while, and often they did little more than sit on her front porch to smoke or drink in silence while the night ticked on undisturbed. 

That wasn't the case now. Though wordless, her attention shone as brightly as a light in the corner of his eye, and not even the stiff brim of her hat could conceal her pointed stare. For no logical reason, dread filled him, body pathetically tensed for fight or flight. 

He was braced for it when Jo burst out, “Is this why you chose to become a mechanic instead of Marshal? So you could find a ship?”

Din stood corrected: he wasn’t ready for that at all. He paused midstep and flashed a surprised look at Jo. “What?”

Much to his frustration, Jo didn’t stop walking. If anything her march became more determined. Din was forced to hurry to catch up with her again despite her much shorter stride, but she gestured at him, then back at the scrapyard and the star yacht like he hadn’t stalled tellingly. 

Her jaw was tight, brow furrowed beneath her dusty tan hat. “You heard me. For weeks I’ve been trying to figure out why someone with your training and experience would pass on protecting the town to become a scrapyard mechanic. It didn’t make sense until just now.”

Din frowned against a tick of annoyance in his cheek. Much like Farro, Jo had made it abundantly clear she wasn’t fooled by Din’s identity pretty much from the get go. Generally she was good about not bringing it up, allowing him his delusion that everyone in town hadn’t figured it out already, but evidently they were talking about it now in however a roundabout way. 

Swallowing a sour noise in his throat at the thought that Jo was either being oblivious or trying to hurt him on purpose, he took her gently by the arm and tried to halt her stomping progress back to his and Cobb’s house.

She stopped and faced him warily.

“Hold up,” he said slowly, meeting her eyes so there could be no misunderstanding. “I didn’t take the Marshal job because I didn’t _want_ the Marshal job. It has nothing to do with a ship.”

“No?”

“Dank farrik, _no_.” It escaped as a grunt. Din had learned once already this afternoon that this was a circular argument he didn’t want to be drawn into. He tried to change tack. “Why exactly do you think being a mechanic is so beneath me?” 

Jo’s expression was indignant, which Din expected, but it was a little sad too, which he didn’t. “Give me a break, Din. No one ever said anything about it being beneath you. Mechanics are a town’s biggest asset out here; Farro is worth a dozen times their weight in credits. But it’s not—” She hesitated, and the only saving grace about that was that Din knew Jo wasn’t the kind of person to edit her words. Whatever she was trying to say, she’d say it. Eventually. “It’s not _you_ ,” she finished. “Not... Mandalorian.”

It was almost the opposite of every argument Din had had with Cobb on the subject his first couple of weeks here. “I’m not freeloading off you indefinitely,” Din had insisted time and time again. The topic seemed to come up every other day at first. “Your town needs a Marshal. I have a specific skillset, and I need a job. Not just to pull my weight, but so I don’t go out of my kriffing mind. I don’t think you understand just how boring Tatooine is when you have nothing to do.”

“’Course I understand it,” Cobb said. “I _live_ here. But I don’t think that’s it. You’ve been chasing after jobs your whole life, and you don’t know what to do with yourself if you’re not doing _something_. But you really think picking up a gun and a badge because you’re bored and sad is a responsible choice? And I’m asking that both as the person in charge and as someone who knows how you get when you’re cranky. Mos Pelgo ain’t someplace that needs gunpoint diplomacy anymore.”

“Tatooine will always need gunpoint diplomacy. It’s Tatooine. And I’m not going to shoot someone because I’m—I’m _sad_ ,” Din protested. The word felt ugly in his mouth. Plus he prided himself on his tendency to only shoot people who deserved it.

“Do you even want to be a Marshal?” Cobb asked. “Or is it because you can’t come up with anything better to do?”

Din could only snort. “How does anyone else end up with a job around here?” he retorted. “No one in the Outer Rim purposely sets out to be anything, not unless they’re a warlord or a Hutt. The rest of us don’t have the luxury of choice.”

Cobb had stalked over to take Din’s face in his hands. “And I’m saying, Din, that right now you do. You just can’t let yourself sit still long enough to think about it, because then you’d have to kriffing _think_.” 

“You’re wrong.”

Cobb wasn’t wrong. Din refused to admit it at first, of course, but then Farro had offered him a job and the rest was history. Taking the question of whether or not he should become Marshal off the game board had lifted a weight off Din’s chest he hadn’t realized was there in the first place. It was just infuriating that Cobb had to be so on the money about everything all the time.

“I’m not a Mandalorian anymore either,” he said now to Jo. it was the first time he’d uttered the words out loud to anyone who wasn’t Cobb or Cara. And even then, he’d put it in an email so as to avoid her inevitable judgement. As of yet, she still hadn't answered.

“A Mandalorian doesn’t sound like the kind of thing you just stop being,” Jo answered. “It’s a part of you, even if you aren’t wearing your armor.” 

“You don’t know the first thing about it.”

She acknowledged the rejoinder with a small dip of her chin. “No, I don’t. But I’ve gotten to know _you_ , and I don’t think it’s that simple. You don’t look like a man who’s all the way at peace with himself.”

Din didn’t really have much to say to that other than “I don’t want to talk about it.”

“Fine.” 

Jo started walking again, gently removing her arm from Din’s grasp. He hadn’t even realized he was still holding on to her and spared a moment to be glad his grip wasn’t tight. However much he hated this, he liked her, and he was more frustrated with himself than anything for being so transparent.

“Sorry I grabbed you,” he murmured when he’d caught up with her again, cheeks hot. “Didn’t mean to.”

“I upset you, and you didn’t hurt me,” she answered. Terse but not unkind. “There’s nothing to be sorry for. If anything I should apologize to you for bringing up a sensitive subject the way I did. That was clumsy.”

Din just lifted one shoulder, unsure what else to say. He’d gotten too used to arguing with people who didn’t know when to quit.

They continued on in silence except for pausing to greet other townsfolk as they passed, or for Jo to coo over the odd baby or gaggle of children. There seemed to be plenty in Mos Pelgo now, and Jo could never resist them even while Din held stiffly back. But when a stray massif wandered up to them, wagging its short tail hopefully, it was Din’s turn to relent. He knelt to scratch over its firm armored flanks and around its spines while it yawned and lolled its tongue, smiling its toothy smile. 

“I’m not trying to leave,” he blurted out to Jo as the massif pushed against his chest for more. From experience he knew he was about five seconds from getting knocked clean on his back in eagerness, but he’d take his chances if it bought him a bit more distraction. “If that’s what you’re worried about.”

Jo watched him fondly, a hint of a smile on her lips, but her voice was somber. “I’m not the one who’s worried about it.”

Din cast her a bewildered look and climbed to his feet. Despite the massif’s impatient groan, he forced himself to start walking again. At this rate he’d never make it home. Then again, getting roasted alive in the sun or mauled by an overly enthusiastic beast would mean he wouldn’t have to endure more of this conversation, and both presented themselves options. Instead he asked, more sharply than intended, “Why are you talking about it with Cobb?”

“Cobb and I aren’t talking about anything,” said Jo as she fell back into step beside him. “ _We_ are talking. Because Cobb doesn’t have to say it for me to know it would break his heart if you skipped town.”

That barely put Din at ease. “Then put it out of your mind. If I buy a ship, it won’t be because I want to abandon anyone. I’ve just got—” With a gesture that somewhat encompassed the sky, he said, “There could be someone I try to see again. Someday. And I can’t get there by speeder.”

He wanted to loathe the look of sympathy Jo gave him. “Your son.”

“Grogu.” Din swallowed. “Yes.”

Her expression softened predictably, and yet the show of emotion didn’t unnerve Din the way it normally would. Naturally Cobb sympathized with his situation; he too had had family ripped away, parents and sisters, nieces. He offered comfort if he could or space as requested, and he always seemed to know which was needed and when. But there was empathy and there was understanding. Jo was a parent. She knew what it was to be responsible for a life so fragile and so loved that you could feel it between your teeth. 

“Do you—” Din hesitated. “If something ever… happened. To your children.” Probably he sounded like he’d lost his mind, but he made himself continue. “How could you just… keep going.”

The force of Jo’s stare could have melted iron. Not with anger, though; some topics you just couldn’t be neutral about. Din let her sit with it awhile, grateful that she considered the question with the same weight with which he’d asked it.

Finally, blinking hard, she said, “Everyone here has a sad story, Din. Me, Ceri, Farro, Cobb… You’d be hard-pressed to find anyone in Mos Pelgo who doesn’t. But you keep going. Never quite the same as before, but you do. Life doesn’t really give you a say in the matter.” She paused a few beats to study Din carefully. He knew what she was looking for and let her see it all right there on his face, for once uncaring if his expression showed too much. “I think you know that as well as any of us, though. Even before you were separated from your son.”

Din jerked a nod in agreement. But that wasn’t why he’d asked. Mandalorians didn’t need a twelve-step guide for moving on; arguably it was the only thing they were better at than killing. But he hedged over speaking out loud what he’d been avoiding for months. The truth felt ashen in his mouth. 

“I think about Grogu every day,” he began. “I—miss him. In a way I didn’t believe I was capable of, not for a long time.” Din had to stop. He swallowed again and allowed himself the spinelessness of refusing to meet her gaze; the censure he was sure to find there would almost certainly be too much. “But I’m happy here. And I don’t know how those two things can be possible at once. To miss someone who feels like they’ve become a part of you forever, but also be glad for what you found after they left.”

Waking to feel Cobb curled up close beside him, head on Din’s shoulder or chest pressed against his back, arms holding him tight; the soft, pleased crinkle of his eyes when he woke to see Din watching him back. The unspoiled brilliance of Tatooine moonrise; the simple satisfaction of fixing a thing that'd been left for broken. Townsfolk who smiled at Din in greeting rather than frowning or spitting at him. Who’d accepted him as one of their own instead of treating him like a mindless killer for hire. Good people who had given him a home and a place among them as a friend, a neighbour, a colleague. A lover. A partner.

Din missed the feeling of Grogu’s small body in his arms. Missed the tenderness of saying, in his most private of hearts, _I know your name as my child_ , just as he missed his Creed and his armor and his covert. A sense of belonging. 

But a part of him had also missed being Din Djarin. He just never realized how much until now, until he could look in a mirror and see his father's eyes instead of a blank visor.

At last he glanced up and met Jo’s eyes. As he did, she reached out and grasped his hand. Din didn’t immediately pull away.

“Most people here are scared of losing happiness,” said Jo quietly. “You seem like you’re more scared to accept it.”

“It feels like I’m betraying my child,” he answered. His voice broke. “I already betrayed my people.”

“And you think being miserable is the solution?” Jo looked at him like he really was crazy. “I think you need to give yourself permission to feel things without acting so damn guilty about it. Unhappy people don’t make good partners, Din. And they sure as shit don’t raise happy kids.”

He huffed. Gestured. “Grogu’s not exactly around for me to infect him with my sunny outlook on life.”

“Doesn’t mean he won’t be again someday. He’s still out there, right?” 

Reluctantly Din nodded. _I'll see you again. I promise_. A promise given in the heat of the moment, yes, but Din would do anything to make it so, just as he’d fulfilled his duty of returning Grogu to his people. And yet the child had asked Din’s permission to leave with the Jedi. Asked as a son would his father.

He’d never thought to ask the same thing back.

Blowing out a hard breath, Jo discreetly rubbed the back of her wrist over her eyes, then planted her hands on her hips. Too brightly she announced, “Now you’ve gone and made me feel like a monster for questioning you. Do you always look this sad, or is it just my lucky day?”

“You’d have to ask Cobb.”

“The former, then.” 

Decisively she offered a smile and started to walk on. With a small jolt, Din realized they’d been standing practically in the middle of the main thoroughfare while they shared uncomfortable truths. Or while he did, anyway. At least Cobb let Din limit his emotional breakdowns to the privacy of their home or tucked away in an alley somewhere. But few people, if any, seemed to pay them much mind. Better things to do, like getting out of this cooking heat. Only a little reluctantly, Din carried on beside her.

“You’re just looking out for your friend,” he allowed when it occurred to him he should probably clear the air. He was glad of the change of subject. Jo hadn’t answered his question, but he didn’t know if he would have either in her place. Maybe empathizing with a thing too much could seem like bad luck. Instead he said, “Cobb is important to me. I wouldn’t hurt him like that.” 

Jo glanced at him, brow furrowed. “You’re my friend too,” she said. “I didn’t say it because Cobb’s the only one who’d be hurt. And I’m including you in that as well, in case that wasn’t clear.”

Whatever had been leashed in Din started to relax, but it ached like a muscle that’d cramped for too long. “I think I’m starting to get that.”

They walked the rest of the way in more companionable silence, and just before Jo was about to peel off to head in the direction of her home, Din stopped her.

“I didn’t want to be Marshal because I spent a long time hunting other people’s problems,” he said. “Too long.” 

Din studied his fingers a moment, thinking. He’d lived a hard life, but his hands had always been surprisingly soft. Scarred to hell and back, sure, but his gloves had taken most of the beating over the years. His fingers were beginning to show signs of a different kind of labour—oil stains, scraped knuckles, engine burns. Bounty hunting was honest work, but it left you tired in a way that had nothing to do with physical exhaustion. Fixing engines didn’t require Din to lock it all away in his mind just to sleep at night. Didn’t make you have to send your kid away to keep them safe. 

When he looked back up, Jo was studying him, waiting for the rest. “I’ll protect this town and the people in it with my life. If there’s ever… anything. But I’m not a Mandalorian anymore, and I’m trying to see what else I’m good for, if not that. I want to be done with killing and running for a change.”

Jo’s expression was thoughtful. “But you are running from something,” she said. “Running in place, maybe, but still running.”

Rather than deny it, Din blew out a breath. He’d be lying if he said he hadn’t looked at or thought about the Darksaber in weeks. It was always there at the corner of his vision, on the edges of his thoughts. Sometimes he held it—it was hard not to, with gravity like that—but he told himself this was the better thing. Just until he could figure out how to be rid of it and move on for good.

“Look,” Jo began, “I can’t begin to comment on whatever else is going on with you, but where the rest is concerned, I will say one thing. There are only two types of people on Tatooine: the ones who can’t wait to leave, and the ones who never had the means to escape. You know what category Cobb falls into.”

He frowned. “What are you saying?”

She huffed gently, like it might have been easier trying to teach mathematics to a bantha. “I’m saying that freedom means something different to folks here than it does to you. _Tell_ Cobb you’re thinking of getting another ship. Don’t just brush it under the rug because you don’t think it’s a big deal.” She took his wrist gently, looked up at him with her dark, earnest eyes. “Maybe it’s not to you—you’ve lived amongst the stars. But he may not see it that way. Not if you don’t talk to him.”

He wasn’t about to touch that with a ten-foot pole. Jo could go ahead and look at him any way she wanted, disapprove of him playing his cards close to his chest or running from his problems, but that was a conversation that wouldn’t be forced. Cobb just—wouldn’t understand. No one here possibly could. Kriff, Din barely did, and he was in the eye of the storm.

“I think you’re overestimating the amount of thought I’ve given this,” he said. “But I’ll… try to keep that in mind.” It would have been so much simpler to say: _There’s nothing else out there for me_. But he wasn’t about to try to explain what he could barely justify to himself. He just needed time.

“Don’t promise me,” Jo answered with more kindness than Din probably deserved. “I’m not the one who needs to hear it.”

He watched her go awhile after she walked away, how it seemed to cost her nothing to stop and chat with other townsfolk, to be what they needed and when. In all likelihood it was nowhere near as easy as she made it look, but Din couldn’t have said whether that made him feel better or worse.

Later, Cobb came home as Din was getting out of the sonic, having blasted away the day’s sweat, sand, and engine grease. 

By unspoken agreement the yellow robe had become his; Din couldn’t help but give a private, exasperated sigh whenever Cobb managed to catch him in it, like he’d just been busted with a hand in the cookie jar. But he also didn’t mind how it never failed to make Cobb’s eyes go soft with appreciation. Sometimes it was a way to ask for things without asking, when Din was feeling fragile or on edge. Sometimes it meant nothing at all. Then again, Din had thrown it on knowing full well Cobb would be home any minute, so maybe he was full of shit.

“Hey,” he greeted before Cobb could say anything clever about it. He’d already opened his mouth to speak, and Cobb was nothing if not consistent in his penchant for busting Din’s balls. It was satisfying to head him off at the pass from time to time just to show he could. “You’re back late.”

The suns were at their zenith by now; Cobb’s office in town was cool and shielded from the heat, but he was a little reddened just from the walk over, the flush on his cheeks close to matching the colour of his jacket.

“Hey yourself,” Cob answered with a smile, unfooled by Din’s gambit as he scrolled his eyes from the open vee of the robe to where it was belted, loosely, then lower to linger on Din’s bare ankles and feet. The way he chased small glimpses of Din’s body outside of bed was oddly sweet. Nudity, partial or otherwise, hadn't been strictly prohibited by Din’s covert as long as no one removed their helmet, but Din had visited plenty of other planets and settlements where beings remained covered, much like Tuskens or Jawas. The merest glimpse of a neck or wrist might be considered taboo. 

That was how Cobb still coveted Din’s skin: like Din was some kind of misbehaving monk. But there was nothing chaste about it. A lot of the time he behaved more casually when Din was fully naked than in situations like this. Clothing was just part of the tease.

Din hadn’t planned on teasing anyone right now, but he could roll with it. 

Pretty much any time he saw Cobb, he could roll with it.

“Did Jo manage to find you?” Cobb asked distractedly as he watched Din drop a hand to the belt of his robe and saunter closer. “Tuskens requested our presence at their settlement—thought you might want to come along.”

“What, so I can be your mouthpiece? Yeah, Jo might’ve mentioned it.” Din quirked a smile and stepped in close; Cobb had already opened his arms to receive him. 

Cobb’s dark eyes wrinkled charmingly at the corners as their gazes met. “I do love your mouthpiece.” 

Though Din rolled his eyes, he thumbed the mole on Cobb’s cheekbone when Cobb slid his hand around to the small of Din’s back. “You keep asking like this, and I’m going to start charging you,” he said.

“What’s the rate?”

“Expensive. You can’t afford it.”

“Do I gotta start selling myself on the street?” Cobb pulled back to look at him with his eyebrows raised, the picture of innocence. “’Cause I gotta tell ya, I got a fella at home who might not like it. He’s kinda possessive.”

Din huffed. “You’re an idiot.”

“Funny, you sound just like him when you say it like that.” 

There was a smile in his voice; Din smiled too, more sedately because it never helped anything to leave Cobb feeling more pleased with himself than he already was. But he tipped his head to the side when Cobb leaned in to kiss his neck, then bite the tender skin beneath his jaw. 

“You gonna name a price?” he prompted. He slid his hand around Din’s hip to palm his thickening cock through the robe. The satiny fabric against his sensitive flesh felt incredible and Cobb knew it. “My credit’s good.”

“Don’t take credit,” Din rumbled, eyes falling shut lazily. “Cash or trade only.”

“You off-world types always drive a hard bargain.” As if playing his words back to himself, Cobb grinned suddenly and lifted an eyebrow. “No pun—”

A pained groan escaped Din before Cobb could finish that thought, battling a smile for real. “No.” 

The kitchen table was within leaning distance. He took a couple steps back so he could prop his ass against it, drawing Cobb with him and undoing the sash of the robe with one hand. Din pushed him to his knees with the other. 

Expression still alight with quiet, self-satisfied laughter, Cobb went. The fold of his long body to the floor was graceful for his age, like the unspooling of a ribbon, and Din touched his fingers to the smile that lingered on Cobb’s lips when he tilted his face up to meet Din’s gaze. 

Cobb’s hands were a warm, wide splay against Din’s hips, immobilizing him with a promise. Din braced his hands behind him against the table. Quite by accident, he’d learned that holding Cobb’s head or hair while he did this would make him flinch away as though burned and spelled the end of anything they might do to each other from there, no matter how many times Cobb repeated that he was fine. So Din kept still and shuddered out a breath as Cobb kissed his way up the crease of his thigh to his hipbone, then the sparse hair below his navel, the hard cock between them going unacknowledged for now. 

His eyes had started to drift shut in unconcerned anticipation. Cobb was a bossy old thing and not the type to be rushed. But it came as something of a surprise when he tightened his grip and, with an ease Din would probably feel embarrassed about later, turned Din around to shove his front against the table. He barely had time to catch himself on his hands before Cobb shoved up the robe with a growl and spread Din open with those big palms of his, burying his mouth against the heat of him.

All Din could do was cry out and go down to his elbows, widening the stance of his feet to give Cobb better access. His tongue, Din had been overwhelmingly unsurprised to learn over the last two months, was every bit as clever as one might expect. 

There was just one thought in his head before Cobb reduced him to begging: _I am never giving this up_.

After, when they were sweaty and sated and Cobb still leaned bonelessly against him, huffing hot breaths against Din’s ear, Din covered Cobb’s hand with his own upon the tabletop and grasped it tight. Cobb was still dressed; the fabric and buttons of his jacket and pants scraped tantalizingly against Din’s oversensitized back and ass. He hadn’t pulled out yet either, and Din shivered at the hyperawareness of Cobb inside him, still mostly hard, the clench of his own body around him like a fist. He felt full and satisfied and breathless with the cautious, terrified happiness Cobb seemed to spark in him just by being near. Din ached to embrace it. Ached to learn how to greet it like a friend instead of a frightened animal. To accept it as something he was allowed to have.

He hung his head loose between his shoulders, then brushed a kiss against Cobb’s bicep since it was the closest body part within reach. In response Cobb nuzzled his nose against the side of Din’s head. 

“Farro showed me something earlier at the scrapyard,” Din half gasped, half murmured, his breathing still struggling to even out. “I thought you could come look at it with me later. If you want.”

With an inquiring groan, Cobb kissed the base of Din’s throat and started to gently pull out. It made them both shudder, again, and Din momentarily wished he’d waited longer to say something, but then Cobb guided him around so they could face each other. He put his arms back around him, and that was alright too. By unspoken understanding their mouths met in the middle, and Din sighed into the kiss.

“Mm,” Cobb hummed against his mouth and palmed Din’s cheek, then said, nonsensically, “Sorry, what? Come look at what.” 

Din met Cobb’s eyes. Eyes that were dark and sharp, full of cleverness, but sometimes, like now, overwhelming softness and trust that had no business existing in such a cruel desert. And yet here they were; Jo was right. 

Din blew out a slow breath and steadied his hands upon Cobb’s waist. 

“I might have found a ship.”


End file.
